News from the New Party

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Health care rationing in the NHS

The former Labour MP for Halifax, Mrs. Alice Mahon, a lifelong supporter of the ideal of the National Health Service, now finds herself let down by this very service she so much admires. Now faced with a medical condition which threatens her failing eyesight, she has been unable to obtain treatment under the NHS because her local Primary Care Trust in Calderdale has refused to fund it. As a result she has been obliged to seek treatment privately at a cost of over £5,000.

Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Mahon said:

"I have been an ardent supported of the NHS all my life, and now feel totally let down. The excuses that the PCTs are giving for not funding treatment are scandalously lame. Everyone has the right to free treatment on the NHS for a condition that results in blindness and devastates lives."

The New Party extends its sincere sympathy to Alice Mahon and the hope that her medical treatment is successful. We similarly sympathise with those many other people who have been led to expect that free treatment is automatically available to them as of right. The harsh reality, however, is entirely different. Whichever system of health care is in use, only as much treatment can be delivered as the available funding will pay for. As things stand, many PCTs are running with enormous deficits, notwithstanding the stupendous amounts of money invested by the government in the National Health Service. Health rationing is, therefore, inevitable under the NHS, even as it would be under any system of privately provided health care. The only difference is in the method of rationing.

The New Party believes that a market based system is the best way of reducing the costs of providing health care. This means that because treatment itself is cheaper to deliver, the same level of funding can deliver treatment to more people. A monolithic health care system is a twentieth century solution. We need to move forward by providing all people with health insurance paid for by each individual's Personal Equity Trust (funded in part through National Insurance contributions) which will buy treatment from independent health care providers, which will need to compete with each other, maximising efficiency and maximising the overall availability of treatment to the maximum number of people. This would be, and in fact always has been, the best way to meet the ideals which Alice Mahon and so many others have always believed were enshrined in the National Health Service.

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Health care rationing in the NHS