To get the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to pay for its lung cancer treatment, Roche had to cut the price by about $1,000 in order to bring the cost more in line with Taxotere, an older medication sold by Sanofi-Aventis, Dow Jones tells us.

Roche’s offer to cut Tarceva’s price was the latest effort by drugmakers to assuage insurers and health authorities about the high cost of new meds. Last year, J&J’s Janssen-Cilag unit offered to cover the cost of its Velcade cancer med if a patient fails to show adequate process (back story).

NICE has stirred controversy with some decisions. Recently, NICE ruled that four drugs used to treat kidney cancer - Roche’s Avastin, Bayer’s Nexavar, Pfizer’s Sutent and Wyeth’s Torisel - aren’t effective enough to warrant their high cost and shouldn’t be prescribed to new patients (back story).