As an alternative to my earlier blog post, here’s Andrew Lansley’s take on Alan Johnson’s top-up announcement today – Pete Hoskin
In his announcement today Alan Johnson sought to put right the awful spectre of patients being denied NHS care because they have accessed private treatment. It is a situation that was morally repugnant and needed to change months ago.
But in so doing Labour have jumped out of that particular frying pan, and into the fire of forcing patients to pay for their care and creating a two-tier NHS. At the Labour Party conference Gordon Brown pledged to stop cancer patients from having to pay £7.10 for a prescription; but they are now saying they are prepared for them to pay tens of thousands of pounds a year for other life-extending cancer drugs. I think this is a telling example of the confusion at the heart of Labour’s health policy.
This confusion has arisen because the Government has failed to address one fundamental question: why are English patients being denied clinically effective cancer treatments that are routinely available in other European countries?
Unlike Labour we’ve sought to address this problem by outlining reforms to the drug pricing system and to NICE that aim to speed up and widen access to drugs. These proposals should mean that all new clinically effective medicines will be available on the NHS for doctors to prescribe to their patients.
We have to look at this issue from the patient’s perspective. If a patient has cancer, they would expect the NHS to provide the treatments which they need, including those which will extend their life. If I want something different, and pay for it privately, then I don’t expect the NHS to penalise me for doing so. Those are two simple principles. Why will the Government not make it that simple and respect the values of the NHS?
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