Editorial: The problem with payments - The Guardian 20th June 2008

The proper emotional response to tales about cancer is sympathy, pure and simple. A growing band of commentators has coalesced on the view that the proper policy response to ultra-expensive treatments is equally straightforward: namely scrapping the rule under which patients can have NHS treatments withdrawn if they pay privately for extra medicines the service refuses to fund. The rule has been dubbed a Maoist affront to common sense, a utopian dogma that would rather see patients dead than give them treatment that not everyone can have. On Tuesday ministers bowed to the pressure and signalled a review.

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