Conservatives for Patients’ Rights ‘Faces of Government Healthcare’ video

Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPRights) have a video up decrying government healthcare.

The NHS has its problems; no-one would say that it is perfect. However, it does a pretty damned good job and it does so regardless of someone’s ability to pay. While we don’t see the faces of private healthcare – or those who can’t afford it – it strikes me that there are some missing faces in the video; those who are happy with the NHS. There’s rather a lot of us.

The first face is Kate Spall, who says ‘if you have cancer in the UK today, you are going to die quicker than any other country in Europe’. The largest, pan-European, cohort-based study on cancer survival is EUROCARE. EUROCARE runs into the same problem that any other systematic review of cancer survival rates in Europe is going to; there are different recording systems between (and sometimes within) countries and some countries don’t keep records at all (the UK is pretty good; adult coverage in Germany is about 1.4%).

Nevertheless, the EUROCARE research suggests that Ms Spall is wrong.

While we are towards the bottom of the table, we are not at the bottom. In any case, this study does not take account of factors such as smoking, drinking, diet and so on. More information is on the latest results page.

A brief search on BBC News shows Ms Spall’s interest in cancer; her mother died from a rare form of kidney cancer. She managed to have Nexavar provided, even though “the drug, which can cost up to £40,000, is not a cure, but can help some patients”. Now, while my greatest sympathies are with Ms Spall, £40,000 is a lot to spend on a non-cure. Perhaps, in terms of QALYs, it was worth it; however, part of her objection was that the drug was available in some English health trusts. While I would certainly agree that there is not enough democratic involvement in NHS trusts, one of the effects of choice is, necessarily, variation. This seems like a poor choice – if you’ll excuse the pun – of ‘face of government healthcare’.

Next up is Katie Brickell. Despite asking for one at 23, Ms Brickell wasn’t given a smear test; by that time, she had contract cancer of the cervix. Again, my heart goes out to Ms Brickell, but this was a fluke. The evidence suggests that the smear test provides no benefit before about 25. If everyone were going in for a test whenever they were worried and there was no consideration about whether the test was appropriate, a lot of money would be needlessly spent on a lot of needless procedures.

Angela French says that it’s hard to get hold of new, expensive drugs on the NHS. Quite why this isn’t the case in the USA at the moment or, indeed, in any system that doesn’t have an unlimited budget is beyond me. Dr Karol Sikora makes the same point; quite why it is any less heartbreaking when a poor person in the US with insufficient insurance cannot afford a given drug is, again, beyond me.

The rest of the people featured are Canadian; I’ll leave them to one side as I don’t know enough to comment on the situation there. I would just note that no-one in the US is proposing a UK-style health service; rather, they’re going for different ways of amending insurance-based policies. The only system that exists like that at the moment is healthcare for the armed services which is, er, pretty good.

xD.