The UK House Of Commons-Style Debate

STRONG SUPPORT FOR BIOTECH TREATMENTS

Cheered by a clear majority of participants, Alastair Kent, president of the London, UK-based European Genetic Alliances’ Network, argued in favour of the last motion which said that ‘Authorities should never refuse access to life-saving biotech treatments’. According to Kent, authorities should not intervene between doctors and their patients by deciding that innovative biotech drugs will not be reimbursed because they are too expensive. Doctors, and doctors alone, Kent said, should decide which treatments patients receive. “If you get into a major accident tonight,” Kent reminded his audience, “the healthcare system will not spare any money to save you. Healthcare in Europe is not about money, it’s about solidarity. People do not choose to get a disease that is expensive to treat. We have regulation for demonstrating quality, safety and efficacy of remedies. Allowing individual member states to cherry-pick and choose leads to inequality, it leads to variation between patients and variation between diseases. It’s a denial of our civil and human rights.” The issue is not about whether we can afford it, Kent claimed. “We should stop paying farmers for not producing and stop paying manufacturers for making weapons for the last, not the next war. If we start shifting the money from things we don’t want to things we do want, of course we can afford it,” Kent skilfully argued.

More sobering arguments came from Christian Siebert, head of the unit for Competitiveness in the Pharmaceuticals Industry and Biotechnology at the European Commission. According to Siebert, a debate on issues of public health and public money requires reason and a close look.  Biotech drugs are usually more if not most expensive, Siebert said, even in comparison to alternative drugs that are less costly but often not less effective. Reimbursement authorities have an obligation to the public, he said, to look for the best value for money, because they have to find funds to treat all patients, not just a few. Therefore, a comparison of the cost-effectiveness of drugs should be part of the normal process, he said. 

He was supported by a participant calling the other side ‘overly idealistic’. “This is the way to go if you want to spend the entire EU GDP on new medicines,” he said. Another blasted a culture in which no money is put into prevention but fortunes are spent on treatments by the time people get sick. “It does not take care of people’s health, it just treats sickness,” he said. Yet another reminded proponents of the motion that “in real life, you have to make choices. There is limited availability of healthcare, limited money, limited kidneys for transplantation. Grown-ups have to make tough decisions, and that’s what you deny.”

On the other side, however, participants said they were ready to accept difficult choices from their doctors, but not from “bureaucrats.”

The debate ended after the fourth motion, but the ideas it generated continued in private debates in the cocktails and walking dinner that followed.
 

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