I read an amazing story in the morning paper yesterday. Apparently, the US deputy health secretary, Alex Azar, has been in London to lobby British ministers to allow the world's huge pharmaceutical companies (mostly US based) unrestricted access to the NHS as part of a package of free market reforms. Azar claimed that attempts to use rationing procedures such as those used by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to cut soaring drugs bills was stifling innovation, not surprisingly the same argument is used by the pharmaceutical companies. Azar also shared the US method of offering private insurance packages to people on Medicare ( the Healthcare scheme provided in the US to the poor and elderly). He went on to suggest that the UK government could consider a similar scheme so that everyone could have basic healthcare, but would have to take out insurance themselves to top up the scheme if they wanted better healthcare than the basic level which the state could afford!
I hope they either put him on the next flight back to Washington DC, or applied for the UK to become the 51st state!
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