Could you afford Cancer life saving drugs?

Health Care Cover Top Ups explained

Health Insurance companies in the UK are currently taking a serious look at a potentiallly new type of health insurance, that of health care top up cover.

There are a potential 25 million customers in the UK for this type of health care cover, which will cover anyone who is not currently protected by health insurance and who has to have treatment over and above that provided by the National Health Service.

NHS top ups are already very widespread throughout the UK, common examples being for prescription charges or dentistry work. Other examples are NHS patients who decide to pay for a private single room in an NHS hospital and couples who pay for fertility treatment and then go on to use the NHS obstetric and maternity services.

The recent public debate over expensive 'life extending' cancer drugs, not available to NHS patients, has accelerated as the list of these life saving drugs has grown.

Since 1999 a Government quango NICE, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence has been responsible for the assessment of all new pharmaceuticals and drugs on a cost-benefit basis, before they are introduced to the NHS.
NICE is often criticised for it's slow response to the introduction of new drugs, and decision making, often resulting in potentially life enhancing treatments not being available to those who cannot pay. Currently worse off patients who are aware of the new treatments, can apply to their local Primary Care Trust (PCT, to receive unapproved drugs, but only in exceptional circumstances and many are refused.
Decisions whether to allow a new treatment vary considerably between PCT's which has given rise to the term 'Postcode Lottery NHS'. Even where NICE gives the green light to new drugs, many PCT's refuse to add them to their lists of approved treatments as some of them cost in excess of GBP5000 per week!

Health Insurance companies in the UK and the Government are currently looking at 'top up health care' insurance, that would not offer the full range of medical insurance covers, but for a few pounds per week would ensure that all treatments are available to everyone under the NHS.

Health Insurance blogger welcomes the introduction of this new cover as quickly as possible. New drugs are appearing all the time and the UK's fastest growing sector is in bio-tecnologies and drug treatments. We need to put a system in place which is outside both the current Private Health Insurance and NHS systems, which not only supports these new technologies by also protects the health of the nation with ALL available resources!

Does Your Doctor or Dentist have Medical Negligence Cover?

Incredibly, while Professional Indemnity Insurance to cover medical negligence is compulsory for many health workers in the UK including optometrists, chiropractors and chiropodists, there is no such requirement for GPs, Doctors or Dentists!

Dentists and Doctors should be legally forced to purchase this PI cover to protect the public and safeguard the interests of patients, according to the Medical Defence Union chief executive Dr Christine Tomkins. The MDU was founded in 1885 as a mutual insurance company and members led medical defence organisation, to help Doctors if they are charged with Medical Negligence claims. Dentists were allowed to join back in 1948. the organisation represents the interest of over fifty percent of the Doctors in the Uk and thirty percent of Dentists.

Under a discretionary policy there is nocontractual guarantee that a member would be indemnified in the event of a negligence claim. On average the organisation challenges 70% of claims made against its members each year.

"i think the man in the street would be be horrified if he heard that his doctor was not covered and neither were his patients", said Tomklins whose organisation defends claims made against it's medical practioner members.

The Department of Health is currently reviewing the situation regarding professional indemnity insurance fotr doctors and is expected to report it's findings early next year.

Yet another reason to consider private health insurance where doctors are are covered if you need to make a negligence claim!

Obamas Health Insurance Crisis - Dial 911 for the NHS

Obamas Health Insurance Crisis - Dial 911 for the NHS

Health Insurance blogger kicks off with an irreverant look at the Health Insurance dilemas and problems facing President Barrack Obama and the USA.

Could the UK model work in the USA

What role for the large insurance companies?

Insuranceblogger asks a lot of topical questions regarding the role of modern health insurance
Originally published at Insurance Blog

UK Health Insurance- From the Cradle to the Queue

Health and Wealth! Isn't that what eveyone drinks to?
A look at UK Health Insurance and National Wealth.

Britain was still reeling from World War Two when the National Health Service was launched in 1948, sweeping in an era of social change and expectation.
Gone were the days of ‘bring out your dead’ if you couldn’t afford to pay.
Despite many changes over the sixty one years and its recent flirtations with Private Health Insurance companies, the so called postcode lottery system and other structural difficulties, the NHS has remained true to the ethos of access for all.
No system is perfect and spatial differences in levels of access and quality of care still need to be radically addressed.

In the UK when the National Health Service was finally implemented in 1948 as part of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee's 'cradle to the grave' welfare state.
A nationwide system of free healthcare was finally launched by Aneurin Bevan the then Minister of Health, which promised us access to health care cover and treatment for all.
The cradle to the grave speech mentality had set the standards for social healthcare and access to treatment for all.
To date, despite its recent structural changes, and despite the healthy criticism and debate that the subject of the NHS always brings, if you look at the system in performance and social cohesion you have to say that it appears to work much better as a form of national health insurance than do comparative systems in so called developed countries. This development in healthcare is always a subject of great debate in the lead up to a General Election, and no doubt will take greater stage in the months to come

Everyone working in the UK has to pay National Insurance contributions as part of their income in order for the system to work, and facilitating everyone in the UK with medical cover.
However National Insurance contributions are not a good solution for a number of reasons.
They increase the costs of labour.
By definition this makes them inflationary.
The costs of production are passed onto the populace en masse
The contributions are by no means equitable
Many sections of the population are able to virtually opt out of the contribution system
The NHS is heavily subsided by the tax contributions of the healthy and wealthy forty percent plus payers.

Whether the United States Government is able to take what could be seen as a major left shift to achieve better social cohesion and consequently improved GDP, remains to be seen.
Are the workers prepared to subsidize the shirkers and the misfortunate? There needs to exist a situation both economically, socially and mentality, of desperation and hope that existed in the UK in 1945, in order to see a fiscal response to the current situation, biting the healthcare bullet that the USA is so afraid to bite. Providing the ultimate National Safety Net!

The States is in the difficult situation of how to deal with chronic sickness, the recession, the role of PMI as an underwriter of GDP and the political influence and lobbying power of the large Health Insurance companies. Rather you than me Barrack!

Gordon Brown should note that Private Health Insurance became one of the first things people were encouraged to buy when her who’s name shall not be spoken came to power in 1979.