Every year I look for a story that illustrates opportunity cost. This year I have recycled one from last summer. It is a classic one on how to best use the NHS's limited resources and comes from a decision of NICE (NICE decides which treatments should be available on the NHS).
There are many such tough decisions and this time it is a drug that helps those with late stage bowel cancer. This decision is to deny a drug to patients that will extend their life by six weeks to a few months. It costs £21,000 per patient.
The opportunity cost of allowing the drug for general use would be the treatments that could be funded instead. The article suggests 6500 patients could benefit a year. Thats £136.5 million a year available to patients who might live a lot longer.
This is not a pleasant decision for anyone to make. But it does bring home the real cost of a decision on resource use.
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