Nationalised health care

It’s the stunning efficiency with which government plans and manages health care which makes the NHS that Wonder of the World admired by all those poor benighted Johnny Foreigners who do not get to enjoy it:

A hormone replacement therapy (HRT) substitute could be available across the country within days if the Health Secretary cut NHS red tape, an MP has said.

Shortages of HRT have forced menopausal women to share supplies, buy privately or go without the “lifesaving” medicine.

Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, will meet drug manufacturers on Thursday to try to fix the shortages.

He will be joined by Madeleine McTernan, who was appointed as the head of the HRT supply taskforce last week.

We have a taskforce no less. And a shortage. Forcing that consideration of which way the causality runs.

There does seem to be a simple solution too:

Theramex, manufacturer of Bijuve, a substitute for Oestrogel which is facing significant shortages, said it had ample supply to meet the demand but NHS bureaucracy meant it was only available in three areas of the country.

About 150 NHS hospital trusts and 130 NHS clinical commissioning groups have yet to approve Bijuve on their formularies and only women in Somerset, Norfolk and Oxford can access it.

Tina Backhouse, UK country manager of women’s health at Theramex, told The Mail on Sunday that the supply shortages could be eased within days if the product was added to all formularies.

Now of course, that’s the manufacturer suggesting a solution that would increase said manufacturer’s sales so the appropriate level - and probably higher than Public Health England’s suggested guidelines - levels of salt should be taken with that.

And yet we do still have that example of the efficiency of government run health care, don’t we? The “not very much” efficiency.

One disagreement though:

“It would be better for there to be a national formulary”

No, it wouldn’t. For there were then we’d have that majority refusal to supply imposed upon all, wouldn’t we? We’d not in fact have those three areas supplying without problems, thereby showing that the substitution does in fact work.

As we’ve been known to point out it is competition - and a different formulary is competition - that improves productivity.