LONDON: Tory leader David Cameron formally reversed the party's health care policy, virtually giving up an election pledge on Patient's Passport, a scheme of offering state subsidy to people who have means to meet some cost of private treatment. He also ruled out giving up the present nature of the state-funded National Health Service.
The Conservatives, who fought the May 2005 general election in the opposition, had adopted the Patient's Passport as the main election plank. Cameron, as the party's head of policy, had helped to prepare the proposal.
In a party rally in London Wednesday, Cameron bluntly said the idea of Patient's Passport was flawed -- as was former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's policy of tax relief on private medical insurance. He added that some of the party supporters wanted to change the NHS beyond recognition into a system based on medical insurance. "I will never go down that route,'' he reiterated.
He said the Conservatives, when they come to power, will increase spending on the NHS. "Costs in the health service will continue to go up,'' he said, adding that the rationing of drugs such as breast cancer drug Herceptin can no longer continue.
He defined the tax-funded NHS as "free at the point of need and available to everyone, regardless of how much money they have in the bank".
The British government had spent 90 billion pounds on health care in 2005, more than one-sixth of its total spent. Prime minister Tony Blair had claimed that by 2008, no one would have to wait for more than 18 weeks to get free treatment.
The government is toying with the idea of contracting non-emergency operations to the private sector and Cameron supports the idea. He said a policy group would work out the details of such a scheme.
Britain's health secretary Patricia Hewitt said later that abandoning the Patients' Passport policy demonstrated that the Conservatives are in "headlong retreat". "David Cameron is having to abandon policies he himself wrote only eight months ago because Labour is winning the argument," she said.
Posted
on : Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:05 GMT | General News
By : Chris Rowe
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