Obamacare for Everybody

Parkinson's sufferers face 'appalling gaps' in care

Parkinson's sufferers face delays in diagnosis and struggle to access specialty treatment because of failures in the NHS, a new report warns.

Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent for The Telegraph provides us with a preview of Single-Payer Socialized Medicine.

Jim Henry, 66, a Parkinson's patient, told the inquiry: "I had to wait six months to see a specialist for my initial diagnosis, but received no information about Parkinson's at that or any subsequent appointment.
"At once stage, my neurologist went on sick leave for more than a year, with no notification or replacement service."

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Parkinson's Disease found a postcode lottery in services across Britain and said there were too few specialist nurses to treat the estimated 120,000 sufferers in Britain.

They also warned that health professionals, including GPs, had a "poor understanding" of the disease.

Diagnosis was delayed or initially missed in up to half of patients, the inquiry heard.
Ministers and NHS managers are to blame for "appalling gaps" in services and a "lack of leadership of neurological services at national and local level" the report found.
It warns that there are too few nurse specialists to treat patients, particularly in Wales and Northern Ireland. (More...)

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Of NICE and Men

NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer's drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease.

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer.

Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma.

Speaking to the American Medical Association last month, President Obama waxed enthusiastic about countries that "spend less" than the U.S. on health care. He's right that many countries do, but what he doesn't want to explain is how they ration care to do it.

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

President Barack Obama speaks about health care during a town hall meeting at Northern Virginia Community College last Wednesday.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: "Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere."

What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs -- including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 -- that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year's ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE's clinical and public health director, noted that "there is a limited pot of money," that the drugs were of "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost," and the money might be better spent elsewhere. (More...)