Objective Advances in early cancer diagnosis and treatment are enabling patients to live longer with more fulfilling lives.  The value assessment in such cases is compelling.  Many novel treatments for late-stage cancer also extend life, though prognosis may still be poor.  The valuation of such life-extending treatments can be significantly reduced by healthcare costs associated with managing patients for longer.  This study highlights discontinuities between HTA for treatments that extend patients’ lives and the NHS’s objective to improve cancer patients’ survival rates. Methods and Results Economic comparison of two treatments with an equivalent QALY gain, one that extends life while the other enhances the quality of life, indicates that to achieve a common cost per QALY outcome the life-extending treatment must be valued lower than the life-enhancing therapy. This anomaly arises primarily because the value assessment for life-extending treatments includes NHS costs of patient management during their extended life in addition to the new treatment costs.  For long-term chronic conditions these additional costs may be easily offset; however, for severe, debilitating, or terminal diseases the impact can be significant.  Furthermore, for new treatments added in combination to standard care, the greater the cost of existing care the lower the value that may be placed on the new life-extending treatment, to the point that new therapies may be deemed uneconomical even if available at no cost to the NHS. These findings challenge the equitable use of ICERs for HTA including the accounting for health services costs during the extended lifetime of a patient achieved with a new treatment. Conclusion Value-based metrics used to appraise new treatments can inadvertently discriminate against life-extending therapies.  Use of the ICER in HTA can result in inconsistency with health service objectives e.g. the UK Government’s goal to improve 1-year and 5-year survival rates for cancer patients.