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Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
I had not actually read your post before this one, however a comment on that article says what I would have.
The last year of life is a huge proportion of a person's entire lifetime's healthcare bill. It's one of the key places where lack of funding of the NHS will manifest unfortunately.
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Mainly due to the high cost of drugs, and supporting palliative care.
My bro-in-law, who was an academic medical researcher, but has worked at various big Pharma companies for the last 20 years, is in discussions with a Pharma company in New England, in it's "Rare Drugs" division - they have one drug which can treat a disease which affects 20 people in a million, which costs $400k per patient per year.
The challenge we, as a country, face, is things that people used to die of are now treatable (a good thing), but often it can be for years at a very high cost, which has a major impact on day to day running costs of hospitals/health care centres - we need to stand back and think about how we can fund this paradigm shift, as long as it is free at the point of access.
I personally think the German model would work better for us as a country, providing the funding required.