The NHS has just made a very expensive mistake (Image: Getty)
The is forever bleating that obesity costs the health service £11.4B a year. So why, having made the decision to use Mounjaro, the King Kong of weight loss jabs to fight it, is it now backtracking saying these life changing jabs will only be given to 10% of the 3.4m people who qualify for it?
It doesn’t make sense. Why aren’t the 3.4m grossly overweight people who could be in imminent danger of getting cancer or having strokes and heart attacks getting it right now?
The fact they’re not means they’re very likely to suffer (or even die) from some or all of the above conditions and the treatment for those conditions is going to cost the NHS a damn sight more than the weight loss jab.
Of course the people who’ve made this reckless decision are the members of NICE – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – but there’s nothing nice, humane or even financially literate about this decision which appears to be putting cost before people’s lives.
But then NICE has got form for it. It gets access to life saving drugs, or at the very least life changing drugs, and it either doesn’t give them to people at all because of the cost or it only gives them to certain people, under certain conditions. So in effect this little organisation plays God and gets to decide who lives and who dies.
None of this makes sense. Did NICE not take into consideration the fact that nearly 30% of the UK population is obese? Did it not take into account the cost of excess weight to the UK economy is a staggering £98B a year.
Did it not listen to Health Secretary ’s endorsement of the drug saying it could have a “monumental” impact on obesity and reducing worklessness as the stats now show obese workers are twice as likely to be off sick.
Did it not read the slew of studies that say the jab has massively significant effects on a whole host of major health conditions and has cut the risk of deaths from heart attacks and strokes by a fifth?
Maybe they didn’t consider any of these because fewer than half the board members of doctors. But on what planet does it make sense to deny grossly overweight people who have tried – and failed – to lose weight a drug that could possibly save their lives and save the NHS multi millions, possibly billons.
What’s the the point of life changing drugs if we don’t use them? Because don’t tell me the cost of Mounjaro jabs for 3.4M people would be more expensive than treating them for the litany of life threatening conditions they already have or are almost certain to get.
And Yes, I know the arguments about how we shouldn’t be using NHS money to help fat people lose weight – that they should eat less, exercise more and do it on their own. And that’s true. But the hard fact is that many millions can’t or won’t lose weight even if it means they might die.
Now we could say those people have to take responsibility for their own bodies. But the reality is they don’t have to. The NHS has to and it’ll cost billions.
Full disclosure. I’ve taken Ozempic to lose nearly four stones. And I’m now on Mounjaro to help maintain it. Yes, I was sceptical. I didn’t believe it could do what I couldn’t. But my mobility had gone to Hell and I urgently needed to do something. So rather than go to my GP who I didn’t think would prescribe it I went through a private company called Juniper to get it. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
Because all the ailments I had – bad knees, breathlessness, bad back – they’ve all gone and my GP tells me I’m at much less risk of a heart attack( they run in my family) than I was before.
So why cant a health service that’s buckling under the cost of obesity give people a drug that’s almost guaranteed to drastically cut the costs of their healthcare?
It’s a no-brainer but the directors at NICE think not. They’ve said only 222,000 of the 3.4m people who need it will get the drug over the next three years. The other 3m plus people might have to wait up to 12 years by which time it might be too late.
These NICE bods ( whose salaries which range between £108,000 a year and £168,000) say they’re limiting the use of the drug “to protect other vital NHS services”. What, the ones that’ll be treating the related cancers, heart attacks and strokes?
The NICE board says it wants a slow rollout of Mounjaro to allow time for new services to be set up and to train staff. Well the staff training should take about five minutes. People who buy it privately learn to inject themselves in less than 60 seconds. NICE also says it needs time to develop a “co-ordinated and sustainable model” which is all just flannel for saying: “It costs too much and we’re not going to be giving it to the vast numbers who really need it.”
Because to them all that really matters is money when it should be people’s lives!!!