Charities call for NHS to stop rationing critical care

[Northerner]

Theresa May has been urged by charity chiefs to stop the NHS rationing treatment for seriously ill patients and to find more money for their care in the budget next month.

About 30 health charities, including the Teenage Cancer Trust, National AIDS Trust and Motor Neurone Disease Association, have raised the alarm about NHS England “restricting and rationing treatment” because of underfunding, especially for patients with rare and complex conditions. The groups from the Specialised Healthcare Alliance said this rationing is taking place without sufficient public scrutiny.
In a letter to the prime minister, they said NHS England is “choosing to restrict and ration treatments that patients with rare and complex conditions need – often without proper consultation with patients”. “We hope that you will take action to ensure full patient involvement in these decisions, and to ensure that any decision to ration treatment is overseen by democratically elected politicians,” they added.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/18/charities-stop-nhs-rationing-critical-care

 

[Amigo]

Theresa May has been urged by charity chiefs to stop the NHS rationing treatment for seriously ill patients and to find more money for their care in the budget next month.

About 30 health charities, including the Teenage Cancer Trust, National AIDS Trust and Motor Neurone Disease Association, have raised the alarm about NHS England “restricting and rationing treatment” because of underfunding, especially for patients with rare and complex conditions. The groups from the Specialised Healthcare Alliance said this rationing is taking place without sufficient public scrutiny.
In a letter to the prime minister, they said NHS England is “choosing to restrict and ration treatments that patients with rare and complex conditions need – often without proper consultation with patients”. “We hope that you will take action to ensure full patient involvement in these decisions, and to ensure that any decision to ration treatment is overseen by democratically elected politicians,” they added.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/18/charities-stop-nhs-rationing-critical-care

How I identify with these sentiments northerner. I have what's described as an 'orphan cancer' in terms the medical funding community use. In the U.K. despite the risks and toxicity (and indeed unsuitability for durable remission in some cases), we are required to have chemo as first line treatment. Sometimes it leaves greater issues than the original cancer. NICE have refused to fund the non chemo alternatives which admittedly are horrendously expensive but spectacularly successful for many. This past week they've refused to fund the most hopeful treatment to be developed for decades. It's an ongoing battle and I have to remain hopeful.
Our American counterparts are all on these non chemo meds and presently the U.K. under performs compared to some of the less financially viable western countries.

I fully appreciate funding restraints and the drug companies need to have more realistic pricing but it's why I feel very strongly about 'health tourists' surfing in and plundering over £280 million from the NHS each year!

 

[Northerner]

Yes, I can appreciate your perspective @Amigo We could afford things like this if there was the political will, instead of spending billions of pounds on weapons we will never use (and may not even work), and making Birmingham a more viable suburb of London by giving it a faster train for rich people

 

[Austin Mini]

Agree, health tourism must STOP. At our local hospital the queue of foreign (EU) visitors seeking fertility treatments is unprecedented so is flying into UK and having a baby then dissapearing by foreigners is a cost us taxpayers should not be having to footing the bill.

 

[mikeyB]

Health tourism is a bit like benefit fraud. It's a distraction, costing loose change for the NHS. The distraction is put about by the government to take attention away from the real problem of underfunding, and it appears to be working, too.

 

[Northerner]

Health tourism is a bit like benefit fraud. It's a distraction, costing loose change for the NHS. The distraction is put about by the government to take attention away from the real problem of underfunding, and it appears to be working, too.

I think it said in a recent report it was costing about £120m - additional bureaucracy would cost more than that, so it's not really an issue. I sometimes (well, often, actually!) think people underestimate what a massive organisation the NHS is and the sheer complexity of the whole set up. The government are complicit in this misconception in the way they put forward 'solutions' and talk big amounts of money that might work in smaller-scale, more predictable 'businesses' or organisations, but are hugely over-simplifying things

 

[trophywench]

The BMA reported only today that the number of actual beds in the NHS had dropped consistently over the last 19 years, when there's been a consistent rise in population with neither Wars nor major epidemics to see any number of us off. We are now the proud possessors of less beds per capita than any other Western Country, and quite a few of the other ones too.

No other country anywhere with a decent health service contends that they can do more with less and less and less or thinks the way to solve it is to tell fibs and act like an ostrich. They continue to prevaricate and pretend instead of making decisions that any of us as patients can act on at this stage of our lives and our health, to secure a good medical treatment for ourselves. I personally cannot even GET medical insurance, even for SILLY money, with the combination of pre-existing conditions I have and at my age.

I want to blooming well KNOW what's ahead for me there, please. It is something none of us ever thought we'd even need to think about - and it's just got completely out of hand. The sodding Government as a whole, needs to put their foot down with a very firm hand - if they want a population to govern in the future, and that's that.

 

[mikeyB]

A heartfelt little rant, that , Jen, but I really don't know what the answer is, the people of England will insist on voting in a party intent on destroying the NHS.

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

A heartfelt little rant, that , Jen, but I really don't know what the answer is, the people of England will insist on voting in a party intent on destroying the NHS.

Agree, herein lies the problem.

 

[trophywench]

Well personally before one Call me Dave got in - I did think that Labour had got it better sorted - yes a lot of upheaval at first - but employees a bit later were enjoying their jobs, they could see where they were going and were all getting stuff like training and support and we the patients were all beaming - so I supposed that any politician with a brain who hadn't just been dropped here from Mars would be able to see that - and BUILD on it. I mean - Nye Bevan got it started and he was hardly a Tory. But of course I was wrong - if it isn't broke don't fix it isn't the mantra, that's been if it isn't broke - then we'll break it.

So - we have an election but unfortunately by that time Milliband had made such a pig's breakfast of it - however we really liked our Labour guy - who'd actually given up being an MP during Cameron's first term - and he couldn't bear sitting there on the outside looking at it now - so he stood again and certainly got our support - but didn't succeed.

Later, oh it's not broke enough - we'll try harder!

Like a lot of things Mike that haven't gone the way I've wanted them to - I can't take any comfort whatsoever from the fact that 'it isn't my doing' because I'm still lumbered with whatever a majority of other people said they wanted, aren't I ! BUT - I haven't actually been frightened for my life before. That is new. And I do not like it.

 

[KookyCat]

Health tourism is a bit like benefit fraud. It's a distraction, costing loose change for the NHS. The distraction is put about by the government to take attention away from the real problem of underfunding, and it appears to be working, too.

It appears we're all fairly easily distracted, much like the misdirection about EU immigration during the Brexit affair. You've got to give them their due, their powers for manipulation are utterly amazing, it's all that public school debating practice. Create the problem, then artfully distract. They've got good game that's for sure.

 

[Bubbsie]

Health tourism is a bit like benefit fraud. It's a distraction, costing loose change for the NHS. The distraction is put about by the government to take attention away from the real problem of underfunding, and it appears to be working, too.

Yes agree Mikey...easy to appoint a popular 'whipping boy'.

 

[grovesy]

I have said this before and all political parties have used the NHS as a pawn for years.