Bag's Rants

Public expects too much from the NHS. No we don't.

Seems they have had, yet another, poll on the NHS. This one concludes that the public expects too much from the NHS. Read more here.

Interestingly enough there is a couple of points made which show the options available on the poll.
1) One in three believed the NHS should provide "all drugs and treatments, no matter what the cost".
2) One in four people believe the NHS should provide the "most effective and value for money treatment".

Well what a surprise. I'm in agreement with both of them. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. We could provide all drugs and treatments in a cost effective way. We could get rid of the millions of bureaucrats eating up the money and negotiate with the drug suppliers. Sure they can screw us over new drugs but we can manufacture our own for those out of patent. I'm sure a compromise could be reached where we get a cheaper supply of new drugs and yet still get value for money on the general stuff. We could also only move to actually only paying for actual illnesses and that does not include IVF and sex changes. Why should someone have to die just because there is no funding and their treatment is expensive yet we continue to pay for IVF and CFOs?

I look at it simply. Like everything else I pay for this service forcibly via taxes. I don't have an option so when I need to claim on it I don't want to get told it is too expensive. If I ever got told my treatment was too expensive so they were not going to pay and I'd be dying in a few months without treatment they had better beef up security for the management tier until I'm gone.

And it seem the people paying the most for the NHS have more of a view it should be value for money and those who are paying less don't see money an issue. Who would have thought that?

posted by Bag @ 12:34 pm