Nice and Healthcare Rationing in The Uk

The tightened regulations and also procedures put in place for the NHS, whether extended from previous guidance or introduced from scratch by the New Labour government from 1997 were not publicly at least depicted as a means of rationing public health care in Britain.41 However in many ways the role of NICE in deciding directly or indirectly, which drugs, equipment, medical services, and health care treatments should be freely available to NHS patients or in fact rationed cannot be denied or played down.42 The roles given to NICE by the government go further than just deciding whom benefits from drugs, equipment, medical services, and health care treatments, and who does not. NICE is now the main body for deciding after appropriate tests and trials, which new drugs, equipment, medical services, and health care treatments will be used by the NHS or rejected due to unclear health benefits, or simply because they are too expensive.43 Any of the new drugs, medical equipment, services, or health care treatments considered to be surplus to requirements will not then be available upon the NHS. NICE however will face lobbying to change decisions from the public, medical groups, and the media when potentially life saving treatments are not approved simply because they cost too much.44

Therefore in conclusion the requirement for the NICE to regulate and indeed ration the publicly funded NHS is perhaps more pronounced than ever before. The demands placed upon the British NHS as one of the worlds most used publicly funded health care service providers. Thus the NHS has to use great quantities of drugs, as well as expensive equipment that to allows it to provide medical services alongside health care treatments of the highest standards. If the supply of public money was not tightly restricted then perhaps NICE would not have to find ways of tightly regulating the health care services in Britain as well as the medical treatments delivered by the NHS itself. Minus the perceived requirement for the NHS to perform its tasks within the confines of the budget put forward by the British government there is uncertainty as to whether or not NICE or any other organisation would have to have been set up in the first place.

 

After all the New Labour government set up NICE to act as a body inside the NHS to give the latter the specialists it requires in order to effectively and tightly regulate as well as ration such a complex state funded organisation. There are literary many thousands of different cures, drugs, alongside alternative forms of medical treatment that should be and are tightly regulated by NICE. Tight regulation by NICE combined with rationing arguably has the benefit that NHS patients get the best treatment available to them. The problem that justifies the existence of NICE is related to the fact that the NHS with all of its various health trusts plus specialist care units only have a finite budget available to them. They have to take that into account when they have to determine all the cures, drugs, medical services, as well as treatments should be provided to the British general public.

 

However not everybody is overly impressed by the functions or indeed the performance of NICE. For example British people on the political left and also health care professionals suspected that the tight regulations and rationing linked with NICE had a more sinister purpose than increasing efficiency, they feared it was a method of getting parts of the NHS ready for privatisation. Indeed since New Labour reached political power during 1997 the private sector has provided facilities and services in partnership with the NHS to treat patients more efficiently and as part of the efforts to reduce hospital waiting queues. Besides the decisions reached by NICE about whether or not to approve treatments can and do cause political controversy.

 

Bibliography

 

Childs D, Britain since 1945 – A Political History, Routledge, London & New York

Coxall B, Robins L & Leach R (2003) Contemporary British Politics 4th edition, Palgrave, London

Ham C, (2004) Health Policy in Britain, 5th Edition, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke

James, H (2003) Europe Reborn – A History, 1914 – 2000, Pearson Longman, Harlow

Jones B, Kavanagh D, Moran M, & Norton P, (2004) Politics UK, 5th edition, Pearson Longman, London

Judt T, (2007) Post-war – A History of Europe since 1945, Pimlico, London and New York

Kingdom J (2003) Government and Politics in Britain, An Introduction 3rd edition, Polity Press, Cambridge

Palmowski J, (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary World History, Oxford

Seldon A & Kavanagh D, (2005) The Blair Effect 2001 – 5, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Wanless D (2002) Securing our future health taking a long term view, HM Treasury

Watson J, (1997) Success in World History since 1945, John Murray, London

Young H, (2003) supping with the Devils – Political writing from Thatcher to Blair, Guardian Books, London

 

 

 

 

1 Coxall, Robbins, & Leach, 2003 p. 10

2 Young, 2003 p. 20

3 Jones et al, 2004 p. 45

4 Kingdom, 2003 p. 101

5 Judt, 2007 p. 131

6 James, 2003 p. 280

7 Ham, 2004 p. 51

8 Jones et al, 2004 p. 624

9 Watson, 1997 p. 123

10 Kingdom, 2003 p. 53

11 Palmowski, 2008 p. 480

12 Coxall, Robbins, & Leach, 2003 p. 371

13 Seldon & Kavanagh, 2005 p. 402

14 Palmowski, 2008 p. 480

15 Childs, 2006, p. 16

16 Jones et al, 2004 p. 624

17 Childs, 2006 p. 326

18 Young, 2003 p. 15

19 Palmowski, 2008 p. 479

20 Judt, 2007 p. 721

21 Childs, 2006 p. 351

22 Kingdom, 2003 p. 55

23 Seldon & Kavanagh, 2005 p. 402

24 Childs, 2005 p. 327

25 Jones et al, 2004 p. 625

26 Young, 2003 p. 302

27 Coxall, Robins, & Leach, 2003 p. 377

28 Ham, 2004 p. 51

29 Seldon & Kavanagh, 2005 p. 403

30 Childs, 2006 p. 366

31 Seldon & Kavanagh, 2005 p. 404

32 Childs, 2006 p. 392

33 Kingdom, 2003 p. 54

34 Childs, 2006 p. 393

35 Young, 2003 p. 307

36 Ham, 2004 p. 52

37 Childs, 2006 p. 392

38 Childs, 2006 p. 367

39 Wanless, 2002 p. 5

40 Seldon & Kavanagh, 2005 p. 408

41 Ham, 2004 p. 53

42 Childs, 2006 p. 393

43 Ham, 2004 p. 213

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