Usually our Wankers of the Week are just people in positions of power, influence or trust who have said or done something stupid. This week we have something a bit different. Our Wankers this Week have done, are doing, and seem to have every intention of continuing to do, something truly wicked. They are treating vulnerable people unfairly, immorally and with a cruel disregard that is positively evil. What's more they're doing it for some kind of distorted left-wing political purpose.
They are the South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust and the Department for Health, and the story goes like this ...
Ex-nurse 58-year-old Colette Mills comes from North Yorkshire and she has breast cancer. The South Tees Hospitals Trust is treating her with a drug called Taxol.
But Colette knows of another drug called Avastin which she thinks is likely to increase her chances of surviving the cancer. She asked the Trust if she could have that as well, but they said no, it was too expensive.
"OK," said Colette, "what does it cost?"
"£4,000 a month," they told her.
"Well, it would be a stretch," she said, "but I've got some savings and the family will help. You give me Avastin, and I'll pay for it."
Sensible, you'd think? Not a bit of it. You see, by offering to pay for the Avastin, Colette would be declaring herself a private patient, and she'd have to pay for her entire treatment for cancer. Including Taxol, consultants' fees, nurses' time, blood tests, scans and so on, that would be something between £10,000 and £15,000 a month.
Obviously she can't afford that. Who could? So Colette's generosity in offering to help the NHS provide her with decent treatment has backfired somewhat - she now risks being left with no treatment at all unless she gives in and accepts the inferior régime that's on offer.
Apparently it's government policy not to let patients pay the cost of additional drugs that haven't been prescribed by the NHS. Ministers say it is unfair on patients who cannot afford such top-up drugs. The patient in one bed might be getting better treatment than the patient in the next, just because one can afford to pay and the other can't. And their answer is simple - they're not prepared to fork out the money required to give both patients first-class treatment, so they'll make damn sure that both get second-best. Nice!
Their reasoning is that it would create a two-tier NHS. You must be either a private or an NHS patient - not both. But this ignores the fact that we already have a two-tier NHS, with both private and public patients receiving different levels of service in the same NHS unit. And don't tell me this isn't so, because Mrs.GOS has been in our local hospital twice in recent years, once as a private patient and once on the NHS. The service was totally different on each occasion. The private food was almost edible, for a start.
The South Tees Trust told newspapers "If a patient chooses to go private for certain drugs they elect to become a private patient for the course of their treatment for that condition. That is the trust policy".
Funny, that. You might have thought that if a patient decided to pay for a certain drug, they'd have chosen to pay for a certain drug. They don't elect to do anything else. If the hospital chooses to inflict some sort of punishment on them for it, they shouldn't try and pass it off as something the patient has "elected" for. That decision was the hospital's, not the patient's.
The Department of Health went one better - they didn't even manage to string a coherent English sentence together for their press statement, the ignorant prats. They said "Co-payments would risk creating a two-tier health service and be in direct contravention with the principles and values of the NHS". This is nonsense, of course. You can't be in contravention with something, only of it. You can be "in conflict" with it, if you like.
That aside, what do they mean by "principles and values"? Don't give anyone the drugs they need, just the drugs we can afford after we've paid the massive salaries and annual bonuses for all our "managers" and "administrators", is that a principle? Making sure that no patient gets any better treatment than any other, is that a value? How long will it be before they decide that a patient with a dodgy heart can't have any more treatment than someone who's cut his finger? - after all, that'd be in accordance with the egalitarian principles and values of the NHS, wouldn't it?
You have to wonder, don't you, what these people think their job is? Just what is their purpose in life? You and me, we stupidly thought they might be public servants who were paid to provide the rest of us, the public, with a service we feel ourselves entitled to. Nothing complicated, you know, just a bed and a bit of nursing and the drugs to keep us alive for a while.
But plainly we were mistaken. In fact, their purpose is to tell us why they shouldn't do any such thing. So far as they're concerned, I suspect the best thing Colette Mills can do is go away and die quietly. It was probably a bit inconsiderate of her to get cancer in the first place.
Bastards.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2007 The GOS
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