NHS lifts ban on `top-up' medicine at last

A socialist evil finally bites the dust

National Health Service patients are to be allowed to pay privately for life-prolonging cancer drugs that the state does not supply. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, will end the practice of with drawing care from patients who pay privately for better medicines in an announcement expected to be made to parliament this week. The U-turn, confirmed by Whitehall sources, follows a year-long campaign by The Sunday Times.

The double injustice of denying NHS patients cancer drugs widely available elsewhere in Europe and then preventing them from paying for the drugs has also led the healthcare rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), to review its method of assessing if medicines are good value for money. Last week Nice announced it would reconsider a decision to deny patients four kidney cancer drugs - Sutent, Nexavar, Avastin and Torisel - that have been proven to extend life. In August Nice said the drugs were not cost-effective. The institute says it will issue a fresh ruling in January.

The government has previously banned the practice of NHS patients buying extra drugs privately (known as "topping up") as ministers claimed it would lead to a two-tier NHS.

Ministers will try to avoid the embarrassing possibility of two patients on the same ward receiving a different quality of care for the same illness by asking those paying for supplementary drugs to have them administered at private clinics or in the private wings of NHS hospitals.

The anticipated lifting of the ban was welcomed by Brian O'Boyle, whose wife Linda died in March aged 64 after her NHS care was withdrawn because she paid for cetuximab, a bowel cancer drug. O'Boyle's story, first told by The Sunday Times in June, prompted a government inquiry into the ban on "top-up payments" by Professor Mike Richards, the national cancer director. The results are expected to be announced by Johnson this week. O'Boyle, from Billericay, Essex, said: "Linda would have been delighted. Linda was so upset by what happened to her. This would be a fantastic legacy. All Linda ever wanted was to be able to top up."

Senior medical figures who have backed the change include Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPart-nersUK, a private cancer care company. He said: "I welcome the ditching of this outdated ideologically driven concept."

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