Too many new cancer drugs are being turned down or restricted to small groups of NHS patients in England, the Conservatives claim.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said doctors should have a greater role in deciding which drugs to prescribe.
The party is calling for better deals with manufacturers to reduce prices.
But the government’s medicines advisory body said it recommended drugs backed by clinical evidence, targeted at patients most likely to benefit.
On Saturday, Conservative leader David Cameron met with campaigners for kidney cancer drugs in his home constituency of Witney, Oxfordshire, where he outlined a plan for a cancer drugs fund.
He said since a Tory government would not go ahead with Labour’s planned National Insurance increase, the £200m this would cost the NHS as a large employer would instead be used to provide more people with drugs.
The Tories said they were not criticising individual decisions made by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, but wanted to see a shift in the balance of decisions.
But the chief executive of NICE, Sir Andrew Dillon, said it was wrong to recommend the use of treatments “where the additional benefit is uncertain”.
Read more at BBC Health.
