Today is a landmark day for the NHS. The widely-expected decision to allow top-up payments is a welcome move – for all the reasons outlined by my former colleague Helen Rainbow, of Reform, in a blog post for Centre Right last week.
The key victory here is for patient choice. Whereas before, in some cases, a patient would have been forced to go private if they wanted the very best and most up-to-the-minute treatments, now they can access them within the NHS – provided, of course, that they stump up the extra cash.
Sure, there’s an argument that we should expect the best treatment on the NHS anyway – given the amount of taxpayers’ money it hoovers up. But the fact remains that – at the moment – that’s often not available. Better a system in which it is.
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