Because the NHS doesn't optimise for cost, it optimises for cost per QALY (quality adjusted life years). Given the high impact to quality of life for blindness your claim is dubious.
NICE make the decisions over cost effectiveness of treatments, and publish their findings. If you can tell me the name of the drug we can find the actual report.
Some Trusts were attempting to make this the first line treatment as an off-license prescription as it was cheaper and the pharmaceutical companies were trying to sue the Trusts for "not providing NICE approved medications and therefore disadvantaging patients" while simultaneously not seeking to license Avastin for wet AMD.
This was a few years ago so I may have misremembered some details.
I'm getting really repetitive but transparency transparency transparency.
Let's make public the cases where the suppliers collude to withhold drugs for actual effective usages "because we have this other more expensive option that's the only one we sent in for approval" whine bitch stfu and do what's best for the patients you money grubbing bastards.
Lots of hits in google.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/glaucoma-nhs-delay...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/elderly-go-blind-as-nhs-i...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/06/hundreds-going-b...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-122995/You-blind-...
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/long-nhs-delays-mean-patients-are...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10702618/nhs-delays-left-patie...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7864729/22-glauco...
The cost decision involved was of course not to have the follow up appointments sooner..
In 2012 they issued a report about the usage of Visudyne/photodynamic terapy which the Royal National Institute of Blind People objected to.
Avastin / Lucentis does not support the point being made. Lucentis, a very expensive medication, was both licenced for AMD and was approved by NICE for that use.
Avastin is identical, but was not licenced for AMD and so NICE was not able to recommend its use for AMD.
Doctors were using Avastin off label, and they wanted the government to force Avastin to be licenced for AMD which would have allowed it to be recommended by NICE.
The makers of Avastin and Lucentis fought this in the courts for years, and took action against NHS Trusts using Avastin off-label. The NHS won that legal case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30138097
https://www.hsj.co.uk/finance-and-efficiency/breaking-nhs-wi...
There is a problem of people going blind while waiting for treatment, but this is related to cataracts and glaucoma, not AMD, and it has nothing to do with NICE (who are the organisation that decides about cost effectiveness) and everything to do with a government that has chosen to de-fund the NHS.
This is what I was referring to.
The cost decision involved was of course not to have the follow up appointments sooner.