This is going to sound harsh, but the fact that other people (government/tax payers) are paying for it makes this even less defensible - wasting your own money

This is going to sound harsh, but the fact that other people (government/tax payers) are paying for it makes this even less defensible - wasting your own money on treatments that is likely to not work is one thing, but this risks diverting a shared resource from treatments that _do_ work. I recently lost my grandfather to vascular dementia, so I understand the feeling of hopelessness, but this is not a solution. I'd _perhaps_ support your right to buy the drug privately, but this would open others up to scams and treatments that have no chance of working (or are in fact harmful). This isn't the same as the war on drugs, where people wanting to buy a particular drug are stopped for (largely) moralistic reasons - this is about ensuring the drug does what the company claims and protecting desperate people from being ripped off.