NYT: Panel Reviews New (age-11-20 meningitis) Vaccine (too expensive?)

[DeepModem Mom]

Panel Reviews New Vaccine That Could Be Controversial
By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: October 27, 2004


A committee of experts meeting in Atlanta will debate today whether the government can afford to pay for a vaccine that could save the lives of nearly 3,000 people, many of them teenagers, from deaths caused over the next decade by a virulent bacterial meningitis.

The price of the new vaccine will most likely be $80 a dose. Vaccinating all 40 million people from age 11 to 20, as some experts have suggested, would cost the government $3.5 billion next year. That is more than $1 million a life spared, far more than health officials are normally willing to spend....

***

The debate before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is a classic argument about how much the government should spend on breakthrough technologies that spare life and prevent suffering. Medicare officials frequently struggle with similar debates as they decide whether to pay for expensive wonders like implantable defibrillators or brain scans.

These debates were once unheard of among vaccine experts, because most inoculations are far cheaper than the cost of treating the diseases they prevent. As a result, the government buys and distributes more than half of all vaccines.

That system is under strain. The latest vaccines are expensive, and the diseases they affect are increasingly rare. For the first time, the government has to decide whether such medicines are worth the cost.

Regardless of the panel's decision, people who can afford the new vaccines will quite likely have access to them. Families relying on Medicaid and other government programs, however, may not obtain the vaccines....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/health/27vaccine.html

[wolfgirl]

1. Vaccine

v. life of a teenager. But these same people will fight tooth & nail to save a fetus (or fertilized eggs in cold storage).
Ya gotta give 'em credit for being able to hold both those thoughts in their heads at the same time. It boggles the imagination!

[ClintonTyree]

2. I had to pay...........

$80 for my daughter's shot before she went off to College, Insurance wouldn't cover it. They either had to have the shot or sign a waver from the College. I figured my daughter is worth far more than $80.

[Spinzonner]

3. How many weeks of Iraq is that ?