Professor Michael Barry:

This is something that has come up quite a bit over the years. We are not actually putting a price on life, but what we are putting a price and a money value on is the benefit the drug will give. If we think about it, we have to value in some way to get some idea of whether we should invest in it. It is putting a price on the benefit the drug gives and not a price on a person's life. The other important issue concerns my belief that all drugs should be assessed on the basis that simply because it is an orphan drug or a cancer drug it does not mean to say it works very well. This is the simple issue. Many of them do not work very well and this is why we assess them. There is an old saying in this game that if it is not clinically effective it certainly cannot be cost effective. For many of the drugs to which we say "No", money is a factor, but clinical effectiveness is a major factor. In fact, some of the clinical trials show very poor evidence the drug actually works. The point about it is if we invest millions of euro into a drug that does not work very well somebody else will lose out. This is called opportunity cost and this is the reality. Will we see this again and again? Yes we will. This is what we will see. There is a conveyor belt of high-cost medicines. Yesterday, I got one for €500 million per patient per year. This is now a common occurrence.