National Health Service - Co-payments

Governments, even if they are radical, often take time to catch up with a fast changing agenda, and while Labour was aiming to double the NHS budget, large numbers of people were not getting the treatments they wanted. 

I proposed, for example, that people should be able to take their money and go abroad, and have the treatment there.

I also proposed that the NHS should employ teams of people coming into this country to perform their operations here. 

The third stage of this campaign is to break down the barrier between “this is the NHS, and that bit over there is private”. Given that in any state of play Governments will only have a limited budget, particularly for a vastly expanding and costly drug sector, in these circumstances, when people are coming to the end of their lives, when the Government have not approved officially the use of a drug that makes a difference to the last few weeks and months, people should be able to pay for those drugs themselves and retain the treatment of the NHS.  Now as a result of that campaign, the Government is saying people can in fact get those drugs on the NHS and keep their NHS treatment. There is bound to be, as time goes on, a hazy line here but I think the principle has been established, that if you have some resources you wish to spend, spending those resources will not disqualify you from a lifetime’s contribution to the NHS.