UK patients live in agony so government saves money
While the United States decides whether to allow the government to control medical care, we see yet another potential disaster come from the UK. The drug rationing watchdog has arbitrarily forced doctors to stop giving patients steroids to stop pain in patients where their pain cause is unknown. Drugs such as cortisone have been widely prescribed to reduce inflammation in the lower back to stop chronic pain. These injections allow patients to go about their daily lives without the need of opioids which can make them sleepy and unable to drive. The UK presently issues over 60,000 cortisone treatments a year and has figured out they can "save" £33 million by cutting the treatments in half. Pain specialists have said that this change in government services is unacceptable and puts patients at risk. Rather than using safe in-office procedures now patients are looking at costly and dangerous spinal surgery that may leave them a paraplegic. (Source: Telegraph.co.uk)
The NICE (National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence) has made this recommendation to the UK which is looking for ways to keep up with spiraling medical costs. However, no pain specialists were on the NICE committee and pain specialists all over Britain are expressing outrage that major changes be made without any science to back it up. Making sweeping changes to the medical system merely to save money at the expense of patients is unacceptable. The UK has repeatedly been shown to the US as the best way to get medical coverage to everyone in the country at a price we all can afford. However, many are worried that b handing over medical decisions to bureaucrats is a dangerous decision that can put everyone at risk. Presently there is a major bill going through congress to make a system similar tot he UK, but still allow people to keep their existing policies if they wish. This sounds like a great idea, but who makes the ultimate decision on a procedure you need? Doctors? Senators? Judges? Doctors must be the ones that make the decision of what works best for a patient along with the patient’s wants and needs.
This change in how steroids are handled will create a whole new group of pain sufferers in the UK. These people have real pain problems that may keep them from working and paying the very taxes that are needed to keep the medical system running smoothly. But the government merely states they are going to save a bundle by cutting the number of procedures by half. What other procedures should be cut in half? Dialysis? Insulin injections? Heart attack medicine? Any group can be nailed with this so that tens of thousands are either put at great risk or die merely to balance a spreadsheet on someone’s computer. People are worth more than dollars or paper that is considered a law. In the end the UK government has to ask how many must suffer needlessly?
The major reason for a government to exist is to watch over it’s citizens and make sure they are safe from internal and external dangers. If patients are dying because a service is not available removes the very reason why that government exists. This isn’t a back woods country that has no doctors or facilities
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