So this story, which was headline news yesterday:

Cancer-drug refund scheme backed

---

A watchdog has endorsed a new scheme under which a bone marrow-cancer drug's manufacturers would refund the NHS if a patient did not respond to treatment.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is recommending multiple myeloma patients in Wales and England should get Velcade on the NHS.

But it said the NHS should pay for the drug, which costs about £18,000 per patient, only when it worked.

The scheme, the first of its kind, was proposed by drugmaker Janssen-Cilag.

It could signal a way for many more treatments to be made available on the NHS, which has been struggling to cope, with limited funds, to provide a raft of expensive new cancer treatments in particular.

Life expectancy for multiple myeloma patients is three to five years, but in trials Velcade has been shown to extend that by many months.

One trial was so promising, it was halted a year early.

Under the terms of the NICE recommendation, patients showing a full or partial response to the drug after a maximum of four cycles of treatment would be kept on it, with the treatment funded by the NHS.

However, patients showing minimal or no response would be taken off it - and the costs would be refunded by the manufacturer.

---

...is all my mother's fault. As a sufferer of that particular form of cancer, she and a bunch of her cronies (yes, she has cronies - all old ladies do!) decided to waltz into Westminster and lobby Patricia Hewitt and a bunch of other toffs to get this drug made available - previously, the NHS wouldn't prescribe it because of the astronomical cost. Looks like it's a goer, now!

Yay, Mum! You da man!