Other issues-crime, immigration-may worry the electorate more, but governments know that few are as prone to flare up as health care. A single tale of an operation repeatedly cancelled, or a tumour that becomes terminal while a patient waits for a scan, can convince people that the National Health Service is unfit for purpose. The effectiveness of such stories has made them staple pre-election fodder in recent years.rnTo prevent the nhs from turning septic politically, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, moved on June 17th towards dropping an increasingly untenable piece of dogma. The issue is whether patients who doctors think might benefit from expensive new drugs that are not provided by the nhs must be denied all state-financed treatment if they choose to buy those drugs privately. The nhs has always rationed carernbut, in an era of medical paternalism and no internet, patients were ignorant of what they were missing. That allowed the fiction to flourish that the highest-quality care was being provided for all, according solely to need. Growing awareness of expensive drugs, particularly for cancer, that hover just out of nhs reach has now called that into question.
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