The basket committee will meet for a marathon and decisive discussion today • The new drug launch will be delayed this month, until February • Brain cancer patients demonstrated in front of the committee's discussions: "The helmet that stops disease progression - like an iron dome for us"

• Members of the basket committee // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

Fateful decisions in the drug basket: Today, the basket committee will meet for a marathon and final hearing, after which the government will submit a list of drugs that will be given to publicly funded patients - within the state health basket.

At this stage, the debate focuses on about 200 drugs and technologies with a cost of about NIS 1.5 billion, with the budget available to the committee only NIS 500 million. Usually, the new drugs enter the basket during January, but this year is expected to be delayed and the drugs will only come in during February.

The committee discusses, among other things, medicines for chronic diseases such as diabetes, which are relatively low in cost and which answer many patients. In contrast, drugs for expensive and rare diseases are discussed that answer few patients. In addition, there are a considerable number of drugs that have come up for the concluding discussion, and they cost hundreds of thousands of shekels per individual patient (see page 15).

Some GBM brain cancer patients showed up yesterday to the Hessel Committee, demanding the insertion of a helmet used to stop the disease's progress with magnetic fields. The lives of 20 percent of patients with this technology are extended for four years or more.

One of them is Rotem Ben-Aryeh (41), a father of three: "In addition to the conventional treatment as set out in the standard medical protocol, we were all advised to add a helmet to the brain, which I think is an 'iron dome' that protects our brain with positive results so far."

Yaakov Eliyahu (58) of Tel Aviv, Israel Post Manager, has been suffering from severe asthma for 25 years and is awaiting the committee's decision. "For more than 20 years, I have been taking steroids. Even after receiving the Zolair drug, there was no benefit in my condition. Asthma is not a minor illness. It causes me to be hospitalized many times and lose working days. Everywhere I had to go with inhalation, and because The coughs of the disease created a break in my stomach.The doctor explained to me that there is a medicine called 'pesnera' that can significantly improve my condition and wean me off steroids, and that it has no side effects. I urge the members of the HELL committee to include this treatment this year and respond to many patients who need this drug. ".

Creative agreements

About 900 drugs and technologies with a total cost of more than NIS 3.5 billion were submitted to the committee this year.
To maximize the number of drugs coming in, pressure has been put on drug companies this year to lower their prices. The committee is also trying to sign with the companies creative agreements, whereby they will fund treatments over a certain number of patients, or fund treatments for patients whose treatment is likely to fail. As a result, a budget of NIS 40 million was once "vacated". Part of this budget is expected to be used as a solution for introducing new drug therapy to patients, while part will, as first published in Israel Today, draw up an experimental program to detect lung cancer in smokers.