BuckeyeBlog

Considering that Sicko, Michael Moore’s dishonest look at health care, is up for an Oscar at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, this New York Times story about problems with Britain’s National Health Service is timely. As those of you who have seen the movie may recall, Moore presents Britain as a place where the sick can receive any service they need, free of charge. Of course, the truth is much different:

[Debbie Hirst’s] breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.

By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor. “He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ ” Mrs. Hirst said in an interview.

“I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ ” — in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen’s always-brilliant Marginal Revolution for pointing this out.

Tags: Health care

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 5:16 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.