TOPIC: So we made it into The Times-UK

Patients set up buyers’ clubs for drugs not available on NHS
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/patients-set-...8e9a8bd81f4a550017c1

Gives all the right reasons for going generic. Same curtsy to Gilead at the end. Allowing them the final "smart arse" word. As if they're saying, "Kiss my diamond studded, 24c gold ring, you ungrateful wretches for allowing you the privilege to go bankrupt paying for MY meds. YES I say MINE. Afterall, I paid for them out MY OWN pocket, with the "blood money" I myself squeezed out of other unfortunates like yourself. So don't you dare to raise your jaundiced eyes toward me in hope or in defiance ... Just go on as long as you can living your poor meaningless life."

MK

Great news, however I cannot understand Gilead's "joke" at the end:

A spokesman for Gilead said that price was not a limiting factor in patient access because Nice had deemed the treatment cost-effective and the drugs were “offered to the NHS with substantial discounts”.

On what planet is he/she living?

rohcvfighter wrote:
On the same planet that thinks it is OK in this day and age for poor Lynne, at 65, to have to do interferon and ribavirin, even though she could have got her own DAA's, because her health system refused to treat her if she took them.

From what I understand Dr Ryder, who is extremely pro-active at highlighting the plight of English HepC patients, says that if NHS England had agreed to treat 5,000 more patients, Gilead would have reduced the price even more. Quite rightly he doesn't understand why they haven't done this. I wonder why. (Note, no ?).

Portugal eg agreed to treat ALL and have done so, in fairness to Gilead, they got the drugs at a highly reduced price and apparently 96% Portuguese HepC patients are now cured.

NHS England is now full of highly paid managerial suits with privatisation and business interests at heart, not patients (some corruption cases recently brought to light) , if we leave Europe I reckon we can wave goodbye to free healthcare. Some great NHS staff who are treated badly under this government know it, one told me 'The NHS are bastards'. eg they just got a 'payrise' of 1% a friend told me with the current rise in National Insurance (originally set up to pay for free NHS treatment ha ha) his wage packet was actually less than before his pay rise. Meanwhile our Gvt (most who have shares & interested in private medical companies & big pharma and something like 90% who were born millionaires) recently awarded themselves a 14% payrise while trying to cut junior Dr pay causing the first NHS strike in decades.

NHS Scotland however are on a mighty path to eliminate HepC and are way ahead.

The HepC Trust are raising funds for a judicial review to question the legailty.

Sadly, It's a corrupt mess and it would take a mighty force to untangle it.

Planet: Profit
Star: Corruption
Galaxy: Greedy Way
Primary Language: Money
Government: Hedge Fund
Religion: Extortionism

Err, not quite. Though I can see how the headlines may lead to that assumption.

The 96% is actually the SVR rate among those who have been treated. As at April 2016 at the Barcelona conference it was announced that 7,011 patients had been treated out ot approximately 13 thousand who were registered as hep c patients with their hospital clinics and therefore funded at the time that the government promised universal access. I've been unable to find the size of the Portuguese HCV population but assuming it is somewhere in line with other European countries then 1% of the population seems a reasonable estimate which would mean approx. 100,000 potential patients.

m.digitaljournal.com/life/health/portuga...-free/article/425590

Certainly a good news story in that their government has promised to treat everyone at some point in the future but not quite there yet.

Ah thx Gaj, I must have read an iffy article.
Either way, as you say, the Portuguese Gvt have done a deal to treat all and have therefore reduced drug prices - The WILL to treat people is there; Here, the will is not.