How cancer treatments will be funded in the future.

There are a number of smart ‘life-saving’ cancer drugs becoming available which hold significant hope, however often carry a significant side effect – namely their cost.  With these wonder-drugs costing over £30,000 pa, questions are being asked who should pay for strides in medical science. 

The answer for most used to be the NHS. However following the battles in the court and media over drugs such as Herceptin (breast cancer) and Avastin (bowel cancer), everyone knows gaps in NHS care are increasing.  Approval from NICE (National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence) is required before most Primary Care Trusts make these advanced therapies available; however NICE approval is no guarantee of NHS availability.

So what does the future hold?  The NHS will continue to ration treatment. Postcode lotteries will remain and the Scottish Medicines Consortium is likely to continue approving treatments ahead of and independently to NICE.

So in the mid term the choices for funding cancer treatment in the UK appear to be:

• Rely on traditional treatments on the NHS.
• Hope that the NHS will make some advanced drugs available under public pressure.
• Go to Scotland for treatment
• Pay for these advanced therapies privately – self fund or funded through insurance (either private health insurance or NHS cancer top-up plans).

Most people in the UK consider health insurance to offer valuable benefits however are unaware of how much private treatment can be.  For instance only a few years ago the average cost of a cancer claim used to be less than £20,000 and now claims exceeding £100,000 are common.

The cost of health insurance is likely to rise in line with new developments in treating cancer. Some insurers are already reacting by limiting the total cancer benefit to say £30,000 whilst others continue to offer unlimited cancer benefits and funding for these advanced therapeutics. 

WPA offers their customers with a private medical insurance plan the highest level of cancer benefit with access to revolutionary cancer drugs such as Herceptin and Avastin as part of their policy.

But for those without PMI, the risk of not receiving the best level of treatment still remains a problem.

An innovative solution has recently been provided by WPA with the new form of NHS top-up cancer cover, mycancerdrugs, which is aimed at people without PMI cancer cover.  It provides cover for advanced life saving therapies denied by the NHS with a remarkably low premium of one’s age per year.

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