{"id":372660,"date":"2026-04-03T08:24:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/372660\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T08:24:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:24:50","slug":"decisions-on-drug-reimbursement-must-be-in-interests-of-all-patients-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/372660\/","title":{"rendered":"Decisions on drug reimbursement must be in interests of all patients \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 Drug reimbursement decisions must be made in the interests of all <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/\">patients<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\">Ireland<\/a>. This important perspective was absent from a recent article in these pages (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/2026\/03\/31\/calls-for-hse-to-reconsider-funding-drug-for-rare-disease-were-a-forgotten-minority\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/2026\/03\/31\/calls-for-hse-to-reconsider-funding-drug-for-rare-disease-were-a-forgotten-minority\/\">There is a treatment and she\u2019s not getting it\u2019: Calls for HSE to fund drug for rare disease<\/a>\u201d, Health, March 31st). <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The patient who shared her story in Tuesday\u2019s article deserves sympathy and support. We would all, in her or her family\u2019s situation, fight for access to every treatment out there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">However, the rationale for the drug assessment process in Ireland requires clarification. The HSE now spends approximately \u20ac3.2 billion on pharmaceuticals, representing around 13 per cent of the total healthcare budget. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Each euro spent on a new pharmaceutical is a euro that cannot be spent on other healthcare. Therefore, the HSE must determine whether the funding of a new drug will provide more health gain than the health that would have been gained from spending that money on other programmes of care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Many understand \u201ccost-effectiveness\u201d to refer to a purely budgetary consideration, but cost-effectiveness is, in essence, all about health. It is an assessment of whether adopting a new medicine would represent a net benefit or net harm to population health given the healthcare that we must be sacrificing elsewhere in the system. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The drug in question (omaveloxolone, brand name Skyclarys) exhibited modest and highly uncertain health improvement compared to placebo in clinical trials. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Yet the company was seeking over \u20ac280,000 per patient per year. The NCPE assessment of the drug concluded there was a zero per cent chance of it being cost-effective. The only way to make such a drug net health enhancing is for the company to lower the price.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Health budget allocation decisions are unavoidable. It is right that we make them in a way that is consistent, equitable, evidence-based and for the benefit of all patients in Ireland. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">DR RONAN MAHON,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Discipline of Economics,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">University of Galway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 Drug reimbursement decisions must be made in the interests of all patients in Ireland. This important&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,6151,85,46,115725,4435],"class_list":{"0":"post-372660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-hse","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-letter-of-the-day","14":"tag-pharma"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}