NHS - There for socialist principles, not patients..

I covered the case of Mrs O'Boyle, who died after she she paid privately for anti-cancer drugs, thus under the rules the NHS removed her free NHS health care.

The co-payment system, that could have allowed her to get treated on the NHS as well pay for drugs that are not available on it was blocked last year by Health Secretary Alan Johnson because he claimed it would create a two-tier Health Service!"

I covered this story here and pointed how despite Mrs O'Boyle paying her taxes her entire life, she was let down by a system that under this government has lost its founding Christian principles.

The need for treatment is being decided by bureaucrats and like in Animal Farm, some have more rights than others.

She had been receiving state-funded treatment, including chemotherapy, but could not obtain the life-prolonging drug Cetuximab on the NHS. She therefore paid £11,000 for it privately, and her husband credits this drug with Mrs Boyle’s three extra months with her three sons and four grandchildren.

However I will point out that Cetuximab the drug in question is available on the NHS in Scotland, sadly she had the poor luck to be "south of the line". Also some trusts provide drugs/services that others do not. Charges can apply in one area and not another. You may have to travel hudreds of miles in one area, yet be treated locally in another.

A lottery that can and sadly has in this case cost a woman her life.

Here is another case - this was an old story that I found, use the headline link above for the original article.

A terminally ill cancer patient has claimed she is being "cheated" out of NHS care because she wants to pay privately for a breast cancer drug.

Debbie Hirst, from Carbis Bay, Cornwall, said she was told by the Royal Cornwall Hospital that if she pays for the drug Avastin, her free NHS treatment will stop.

The hospital said that allowing patients to contribute towards NHS care, known as co-payment, was against the principles and values of the NHS and could create a "two-tier" health care system.

But Mrs Hirst said she was told this summer that if she paid for Avastin she would continue to get NHS care and that three other patients at the hospital were already doing it.

The 56-year-old mother of two said: "In December I went along to the oncology department and was told I would have to pay for all the treatment, meetings, scans - which cost £1,000 - and blood tests privately.

The hospital's medical director, Dr Rob Pitcher, said he had "every sympathy" for Mrs Hirst and regretted "the distress caused to her and her family".

He said: "National Department of Health guidelines make it clear that for any single episode of treatment a patient must either be fully NHS or fully privately funded and that the trust should not offer the option of co-payment for specialist drugs.

"Drugs like Avastin have to be assessed in terms of existing research and their likelihood of benefiting an individual patient.

"For those individual cases where the NHS does not routinely fund treatment, the Primary Care Trust has a Special Case Review Panel, on which clinicians are a majority.

"A GP or a clinician involved in a patient's care may ask to have individual requests for drugs not routinely funded by the NHS, considered by this panel."

Some more with regards her story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7219373.stm

Let us just hope that she is not another person murdered by the socialist filth in New Labour, who put their dogma over that of human lives.

New Labour, happy to let cancer patients die.

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