expensive cancer drug insurance
expensive cancer drug insurance tinyurl.com/2bn9n8 Read all about it. Looks a good investment for the cancer free but what would it cost for those already diagnosed? dilly
I haven’t looked into this in detail of course but I suspect they wouldn’t offer this insurance to someone with a past history of cancer.
There is an article in today’s Daily Mail stating that anyone who has, or had, cancer will not be insurable. Neither will anyone with a parent or sibling who has had cancer. Just my luck, as I have/had it, father and brother both died of cancer. Guess we will just have to rely on the abominable NHS.
Liz.
Don’t think it is such a good investment The really expensive drugs are often so expensive in part because they are very targeted at specific cancers and have small markets as a result. So, herceptin and lapatinib are great if you are her2 positive, but the vast majority of breast cancer patients aren’t and even at that herceptin is now pretty widely available to high risk women. The main difficulties in availability arose before herceptin was licenced for early use and will this insurance cover such situations (since some private patients found to their shock, shame on you AXA PPP, that their insurance company won’t cover them). Another one of the really expensive ones, a one for lung cancer, works brilliantly but only in people who have never smoked, which isn’t that common. The other two common cancers are prostate cancer, which can often be treated very effectively with NHS treatments to the point where the average patient dies with rather than of prostate cancer. Colon cancer may be another matter because of avastin, which is incredibly expensive, but if they are cutting out people with any family history of cancer then I am not so sure that its a good investment for the pool that is left.
The NHS must find a way of funding drugs I feel quite shocked about this new kind of insurance…basically a company is offering insurance for £100 a year for people to access expensive cancer drugs which NHS won’t fund. First, of course this insurance wouldn’t be available to any of us cause we all have cancer already…
secondly there really must be a radical review of NHS financing to see how it can pay for the ever increasing cost of drugs…not just for cancer but for other life threatening illnesses too…Alzheimers for example. I know nothign much about NHS financing but I do know that a real socilaist government would put people before wars and find a way of funding new drugs and slashing the greedy profts of the drugs companies. It will as always be better off people who can afford to take out this insurance…as ever the people who can’t afford insurance won’t. Will they then be dnied treatments their richer peeers can get? That stinks.
By the way…AXA PPP has now agreed to fund herceptin but only for a year which wouldn’t help anyone with mets on it for longer. This news came in my policy renewal, written in such smug patronising fashion. (regulars will know I suffer extreme guilt about private medical insurance…taken out against better principles just 5 months before my diagnosis.) You don’t get better or necessarily faster tretament but you do get more time with the consultant and smoked salmon sandwiches brought to your private room during chemo…which is why even on a pension I’ve continued to pay in though remain ambivalent.
Jane