Top-ups are just the thin edge of the wedge in an inevitable movement towards a co-payment model for funding healthcare, according to a leading clinician
Speaking at Laing and Buisson’s annual PMI conference, Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of Cancer Partners UK, predicted that the existing NHS funding model would never be able respond to the growth in expensive medical innovations.
“The need for top ups has been dampened but it is going to come back with a vengeance,” he said
Highlighting poor access to targeted radiotherapy and a pipeline of 40 new drugs (at a cost of up to £100,000 per patient), Professor Sikora, currently developing a network of independent cancer therapy centres, warned that in the current NHS “not everybody can have everything”, making the involvement of the private sector inevitable.
The conference took place in the same week that the parliamentary Health Committee raised concerns that the implementation of top-ups guidance could result in the emergence of a two-tier NHS. The report on top-up fees also described the new guidance on approving endof-life drugs as an “inequitable and an inefficient use of NHS resources,” highlighting the finite funds available to the Department of Health (DH).
The committee expressed doubts about whether the principle of delivering NHS and privately-funded care separately was even feasible, fuelled by evidence from the Royal College of Physicians and a claim from one NHS chief executive that it was “naive” and “simply not possible”.