Rationing and charges would destroy NHS principles

Published on Sunday 21 June 2009 23:13

CARELESS talk costs lives and it may cost us our NHS. We are told an ageing population and rising patient expectations are placing inexorable demands on the NHS, but these claims have been contradicted by parliamentary enquiries.

To date, there has been too little scrutiny of where the cost pressures are coming from and how money is spent. The real inflationary pressures are the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, technologies and the exorbitant cost of new hospitals and GP surgeries financed using private finance and equity.

In the UK, 12-14 per cent of all health service expenditure is on pharmaceuticals, but there has been too little public examination of why the prices charged for drugs and new technologies are so high.

Cost pressures also manifest themselves through the new charges for private finance.

The taxpayer, having bailed out the banks to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds, is now being charged excessive amounts for hospital building so that the banks can rebuild their balance sheets.

Patient charges would not promote efficiency or fairness in the NHS. Charges would create a two-tiered system based on a patient's ability to pay.

The principle of the NHS is that all effective treatments should be available free at the point of delivery. This principle should be inviolate. Rationing will destroy it.

Advocating changes to funding and a reduction in services is a bridge too far. The solution is not to blur the principles and goals of the NHS by allowing the introduction of private funding and private health care.

&#149 Professor Allyson Pollock is head of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at Edinburgh University.