There is often a lot of confusion about how the UK’s National Health Service, the NHS, works, especially with regard to pre-existing and long-term medical conditions. The following short guide to thyroid treatment on the NHS should alleviate a lot of this curiosity and perhaps even work as a guide to the treatment of long-term life threatening conditions in the future: perhaps the insurance companies will realize that receiving a small sum of monthly every month for life is infinitely preferable to eye-watering sums once or twice and the disablement or worse of their clients!
It Is Taxpayer Funded
The NHS is entirely funded by the UK government who set aside a certain sum each year to fund the medical provision for the entire country. This money covers salaries and medications, administration and secretarial work, ambulances – anything that falls under the remit of the NHS.
The money is awarded to the health service and there is no expectation that hospitals and health-care providers will make a profit: their goal is the long-term health and comfort of their patients.
The Medication is Paid For
It is often whispered that medication is not bought at market value and medical staff are poorly paid – how else could an institution the size of the NHS be able to provide free care to its end users? But this is far from the truth.
As mentioned above, the NHS’s annual budget is used to source medications (such as thyroid hormone Liothyronine UK at International Pharmacy), medical supplies and equipment and to pay medical staff at various levels, from the janitors who are on the lowest pay-rung all the way up to specialist consultants – the latter of whom are some of the best in the world, and many of whom also work in private medicine, occasionally even in other countries if their services and skills are in demand there.
The Overseeing Body
The NHS is not a self-regulating body – there is an overseeing body which independently assesses the best use of the NHS’s funds and personnel: NICE. This stands for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and the body’s function is to ensure that the NHS delivers value for money. This can mean that sometimes new treatments are not authorized until they have been proven to be highly efficacious and, if possible, cost effective too. In short, NICE has the ultimate decision over whether a treatment will be made available on the NHS – but their driver, just as with the NHS’s own, is always to ensure the greatest possible health outcomes for as many people as possible.
And it is not true that if a treatment is too expensive, the NHS or NICE will refuse to provide it.
If the treatment works, will restore the patient to a good level of health with a positive improvement to their quality of life, both bodies will work hard to ensure that the patient is given that treatment – even if it costs millions of pounds.
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