Her quality of life can, we are told, be markedly improved by a new vastly expensive medicine costing around £250000 per year, though there might be costs of her current treatment which might be avoided.
Can she have it in a communally funded system?The details of course need scrutiny - is her quality of life that poor without and would it be much better with the medicine? Is the pharmaceutical company charging a reasonable price? And so on. But supposing they are all true?
And supposing we agree she should have the medicine?
Can we make savings elsewhere? What about children not yet conceived? How much should we spend on assisted conception? If the parents to be, on investigation, show no tangible disorder apart from advancing age should we still fund treatment? How good are the results of assisted conception in parents of a certain age who have returned broadly normal findings on investigation? Is investment here worthwhile? Have such intending parents perhaps just waited too long to start a family and foregone their opportunity? Should a communally funded system just accept such a situation?
Perhaps we could fund that little girl after all.
