The UK is again in the midst of a crisis of purpose as it seeks to understand how to balance the monopoly (under) supply of health care that characterises the NHS, and enabling individuals to purchase (mainly) medicines that are deemed too expensive.  Apart from the argument made in an earlier posting that the NHS cannot get off the hook of paying for high cost healthcare, rationalising the current mix of co-payments can only be good.  The effect of enabling top-ups (as if that is really what they are, of course), or more accurately co-payments, would actually harness a variety of features that currently elude UK health policy makers.

Enabling wider use of copayments (also apart from the literature which would say they increase social injustice and are an example of a policy zombie), would turn the UK NHS into the French health system — and given the evidence from France, that might not actually be a bad thing.

Such a change would have the effect of clarifying the current dispensing fees for medicines, bundling them with the cost of medicines deemed by NICE to be excessively costly, and enabling payment by individuals through suitably prepared supplementary health insurance — which reversing the senseless actions of the Labour government in 1997 could be made tax deductible.  It would also enable a simplification of the current gap between NHS and private dentistry (by blending entitlements) and enable easier utilisation of the wider healthcare infrastructure of public and private (sorry, not very politically correct here, independent) provision.  Further bundling with individual social care budgets would open the way toward consumer-led purchasing of healthcare, something of considerable interest to people with long-term conditions who no doubt dislike others telling them how to lead their lives.

All this would provide the needed disruptive influence to drive provider reform and improve quality and system responsiveness much faster than would otherwise be the case if the PCTs, ICOs and whatever next crops up, were to try to achieve the same goals through institutional planning processes (not an easy thing to do with complex adaptive systems that in effect ignore the impact of patients in the system).

No need to create a market, no need to fuss about social justice, individuals would be given responsibility for their care and that is a just thing to do. The NHS in its current form  effectively insulates individuals from the consequences of their own poor health and lifestyle choices which only exacerbates injustice to the extent that it undermines individual autonomy.

Rather than co-payments having the economic effect that various folk have written about, policy makers would have instead a mechanism by which public health goals could be pursued, through a partnership between the state/NHS and the individual, rather than a partnership between the state/NHS and PCTs/itself, with the patient as an interested, but disenfranchised bystander.

NICE’s position on the rule of rescue is incompatible with the purpose of the NHS as a state mandated healthcare system which must at least be the option of last resort for people where social values and preference would provide healthcare — despite NICE’s analysis.  Government cannot let HTA bodies such as NICE ignore the rule of rescue.  NICE argues that it adequately takes account of this — but there is a discontinuity in the applicable decision logic below and above NICE’s QALY threshold.  NICE in effect is applying below the line logic to above the line issues.  The issue of compliance and indeed civil disobedience may be applicable as doctors are prohibited from violating their professional codes of conduct, or acquiescing in acts or procedures that would cause them to violate their ethical code.  A doctor strictly speaking cannot not aid a person caught by the NICE threshold cutoff, where they are able.  The state is obligated to interevene and pay for expensive care as it is not an act of supererogation, but it is the State’s duty. Therefore, the State must act in cases above the line out of duty –  aiding people who might cost a lot by HTA QALY benchmarks but if the state doesn’t act, and who will?  This is especially troublesome in the UK where the NHS is presented as the health provider of last resort — not something NICE has clearly thought through.  Will the politicians allow NICE to wag, so to speak, the objectives of universal healthcare?

As other countries adopt NICE-like thinking, how will they come to understand the role of the state?