The New York Times (you read that right) has a story about the UK’s National Health Service that should raise alarms for anyone concerned about the ability of people to get care. The NHS has long turned a blind eye to those with money who went outside the system for care, but according to the Times has become less willing to do so.
The result in one case was to deny a woman breast cancer treatment because she paid $120,000 on her own to use Avastin, “a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay” but one that the NHS does not cover.
?You have a population that is informed and consumerist about how it behaves about health care information, and an N.H.S. that can no longer afford to pay for everything for everybody,? he [Karol Sikora, a professor of cancer medicine at the Imperial College School of Medicine] said.
So much for the argument that people are too ignorant.
