Healthcare Systems Failing in the USA
My husband is sitting in the next room, watching Meet the Press, while I sit at my computer and listen in, occasionally commenting on situations I find particularly vexing. There's a lot going on in the world today that's of concern (I'm understating. Bigtime!) and I'm not always happy with the ways in which politicians attempt to defend our
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Possibly that was a typo, but I meant postcode, (like the US zipcode) lottery. That is, the treatment a patient receives can be determined by where they live.
In the UK we have this thing called NICE who basically say what the NHS will pay for and what's too expensive/not proven to be effective enough.
No one likes to say it out loud, but ultimately there has to be rationing because to do everything anyone could ever possibly want would take an infinite amount of money. In practice most people get good treatment when they need it and don't have to pay a penny (other than the taxes they've paid all their lives, of course). However, we sometimes get a controversial case where someone will be demanding some brand new wonder drug and their health authority won't provide it.
NICE are supposed to evaluate all new drugs and treatments to ascertain whether, for example, a new cancer drug is better than what's currently in use. Sometimes desperate patients will demand something that is brand new, just out of the experimental stage and just coming into general use. Usually new drugs at this stage are expensive, so it all gets very difficult. How do you balance giving someone with terminal cancer another 6 months of life against using that money to do several hip replacements?
Sometimes, for some reason, one health authority in one region will adopt a drug before other areas do. (Hence postcode lottery.) Actually my daughter who is Rhesus negative (like me) went over the border to England to get an injection to prevent the formation of antibodies during her pregnancy. Wales now do offer it, but didn't then. Our daughter paid for it privately, but not everyone can afford to do that and anyway it then leads to accusations of a two-tier system, one for those with money and one for those without.
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Is the treatment new? It does seem to me, however, to be the sort of preventative treatment that will save more money than it costs, which I think should be a strong factor for making it universally available.
Do you feel that by living in Wales you are less likely to be eligible for treatments?
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