cure her. IF CASH were no object, the tragic case of 10-year • old Child B would never have happened.
Cambridge Health Commission refused to pay €75.000 to treat her rare form of leukaemia, arguing that it could not be justified since she stood only a 10-20% chance of recovery.
Of course most people would readily risk this money if a life could be saved. Instead the health authority spent more money in the courts justifying their refusal to treat Child B than they would have spent trying to out.
They claimed that the case would set a precedent. If she succeeded, others might demand their right to expensive treatment.
In today's cash-limited NHS, if they spent this much on her, the argument goes, they would have less to spend on patients with less unusual and more easily cured health problems.
It all comes down to cash.
The root problem is that there is not enough cash to go round. Britain spends less of its national wealth on health care than almost any advanced economy. The result the others. is over a million on waiting lists, and growing gaps in care when the money runs more are falling back on the Ironically, in the USA, argument that demand for where consultants and pri- health care is 'infinite', while vate hospital corporations get resources are finite. rich by forcing additional This is absurd. There is a treatment on to patients, to be finite, measurable number of paid for by insurance compa- people waiting for treatment. nies, the problem would have A relatively small percentage been the other way round: increase in NHS spending relatives would have had to would increase capacity to step in if they didn't want her deal with to undergo chemotherapy. keep pace with the health Neither system is geared needs of Britain's growing to the needs of patients. The elderly population. British system prioritises tax An expansion of the NHS cuts for the rich, the largely would also create vital new privatised US system leaves tens of millions without But of course it is not only health insurance and rips off Tories who claim that the present situation of inadequate In Britain as hospital resources is inevitable. bosses and doctors struggle Labour's Margaret Beckto make ends meet, more and ett, the merest Shadow of a spokesperson on health, told the Independent that National Health Service cannot possibly afford what is .. north London have voted unanimously to rubber-stamp plans to close the busy casualty unit and acute beds at Edgware Hospital. Over 55,000 A&E cases a year attend the Edgware unit: under the new plans most of these would be forced to make long, awkward journeys to other hospitals. The Barnet Health Authority decision rode roughshod over the vocal objections of the entire local community in the boroughs of Barnet, Harrow these cases and Beckett: no alternative to Tory rationing now medically possible." Labour has gone along with the Tory 'community care' plans that have privatised most care of the frail elderly: now they appear to be signing up for permanent rationing of health care. And in place of opposing the Tory programme of hospital closures and bed reductions - which led to the tragic "The fiasco of Bexley man Malcolm Murray being airlifted