April 06, 2009
Very NICE
How's this for an Orwellian ministry acronym?
In Britain, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reviews new medical treatments to determine whether or not a treatment's effectiveness justifies its price tag. Based on this assessment, NICE recommends whether new treatments should be covered under the country's public health care system, the National Health Service. Most of the time the NHS makes those recommendations hard-and-fast policy. As a result, NHS physicians are often prohibited from prescribing newer, more expensive treatments because NICE has determined they're not worth the cost.
Posted by Wilson Mixon at 04:35 PM in
Politics