GAZ@SIMPLYMEGA.COM

So there you are suffering from a life threatening but treatable disease.
So is the person in the next bed to you.

The Consultant comes around and you hear him telling the person next to you that the outlook is good and that the drugs he will be given stand a good chance of increasing his chances of survival and lengthening his life expectancy.
Your hopes are lifted by this good news.
Then the Consultant comes to you.
With a compasionate, yet grave, expression he informs you that ,although the drugs exist to treat your , there is little they can do to help you.

Why the difference?
The person next to you has been able to afford to pay into a Top Up scheme allowing him to purchase life saving drugs. You on the otherhand have had a tough time of it lately and had to for go this luxury out of nessecity (pay the mortgage, pay for you kids further education, had to give up work through ill health, etc) and therefore do not have ‘the credit’.

That is what this sort of scheme will mean for thousands of people in this country if they go ahead.
It will deprive the majority of people the treatment they deserve.
I’m not against the government bailing out the banks to stabilize the economy of our civilisation but how come all that money is there to be used for that but we can’t afford to treat tax payers illnesses with the best available?

Top Up shemes will make the insurance companies and the drug companies money (because the prices will only go up).
And lets be honest, if something like last week happens again in the financial markets whose to say that you suddenly find that the company who have been managing your top up account is broke all of a sudden and your no better off than before?

For all the failings of the welfare state, the NHS is something that we should be proud of and be finding ways to improve, rather than finding ways to profit out of the inevitability of illness.

\m/