NHS surplus £1.6BN, funding not blocked by the Dept of health,so why are cancer patients denied drugs ?

Question

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7584868.stm

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Department of Health has issued guidance to the NHS that makes it clear that funding for a treatment should not be withheld

http://pages.citebite.com/m7a6o1k6nrpr

Answer 1

Bureaucracy.  Anything involving special care is subject to a sea of red tape.  We have problems in the US with private insurers too but nothing of the magnitude found in government-rationed health care.  Getting easy primary care (i.e antibiotic for a URTI) is fairly straightforward though in both systems.

Answer 2

The previous answer said this was down to bureaucracy - and they are right.  

The NHS spends as much per head on cancer care as is spent in most European countries, yet we are 17th in post cancer survival rates - France, Germany etc. are top of survival rates.

But speaking very generally, health care abroad is usually a combination of Government funding and obligatory private insurance.  Contrary to what the NHS tries to tell us, most patients abroad will pay out the same as we do - but this is handled differently.  

But there is one big difference - when an insurance company is involved they check every payment to ensure that money isn't wasted.  In NHS no-one checks this - hence you see massive new state-of-the-art photocopier machines in every NHS hospital, Chief Executives installing en-suite bathrooms for their offices, etc, and the latest is the IT system is now delivering prescriptions that double up on drugs - and once these are dispensed the hospital pharmacists won't take them back.

Altogether the NHS wastes money on a massive scale.  As the cancer guru Prof.Karol Sikora says "administrators are worried about the depth of pile of their carpets".  But knowing that money is being wasted, the administrators try to stem the flow out by refusing costly drugs - they may have the money, but want to ensure they don't run over budget.

The sooner Britain goes over to a continental system, the better.

Verite R