According to an article in The Times of London by Health Editor Nigel Hawkes (“Delay Over Top Cancer Tratment for Women”, Dec. 29), there is wide disparity of access in England’s National Health Service’s (NHS) 32 cancer networks to three new medicines for breast cancer: Femara (letrozole), Aromasin (exemestane), and Arimidex (anastrozole). According to the article, research recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that Femara results in 30% greater chance of avoiding a recurrence after surgery.
The medicines are available in Scotland, and some English cancer networks, but others ration or don’t offer them at all.
This is another example in a long list that shows how so-called “public” health care fails in its primary objective: eliminating disparities in access to health services.
Furthermore, English patients do not have a choice of NHS trusts or cancer networks to use: the government has established them geographically, resulting in a “postcode lottery” , as Mr. Hawkes puts it. An Englishman’s home is his castle, but it’s also an Englishwoman’s prison if it’s within the boundaries of a cancer network that doesn’t provide her with the best treatment.
Fortunately, people in the United Kingdom have the freedom to buy private health insurance to make up for shortcomings in the government’s system (a freedom the Canadian government still denies to its subjects). The major competitor in the private insurance market in the U.K. is BUPA, a non-profit outfit whose standard benefits include “access to new, effective drugs and other treatments that may not yet be available on the NHS, including those for early stage breast cancer, bowel, and lung cancer.” (See www.bupa.co.uk/heartbeat.)
Advocates for breast cancer victims are lobbying hard to get greater access to new medicines via the NHS. Maybe they are aiming too low. Perhaps it’s time for the British government to give the people’s health money to the patients who need it, so that they can buy superior coverage in the private market.
