Having read this article on The Guardian today, I  take the occasion to write about drugs funding.
Everybody knows cancer is not a joke. Nevertheless, NHS England are trying to reduce costs at expense of stopping the funding of cancers drugs. Fear not, folks! More cuts are coming, if they already haven’t come.

Working in the public Catalan health system, as I do, gives me enough insight to say that the trend is going to be PRIVATISATION. In Catalonia we had, for a six month period, a drugs co-payment system which consisted on paying higher taxes for medication, according to people salary, plus 1€ for each drug prescription. This measure was undertaken till January 2013, when it got cancelled, because it was considered unconstitutional. The law says national health services are free. Shame on all them.

We want to life more -> we use drugs to do it -> drugs are expensive ->we need funding -> fundig runs out -> DANGER!!

Last year I attended a lecture of Dr. David Stuckler, Professor of political Economy and Sociology, in Oxford University, about the repercussions of the crisis on Public Health. I remember very clearly how he referred to some research done in Greece and how the crisis contributed to a national increase of  incidence and mortality for HIV, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

Health systems are not jokes. They provide health and confort to the ill population. They also protect and control the healthy ones.

Welfare reforms are needed urgently, but never forgetting that what can be saved today, finantially wise, can be lost tomorrow.