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With cancer and heart conditions the two top health conditions which people regularly worry over, insurers AXA PPP healthcare have removed all of the pre-existing limits on its cover for licensed cancer drugs on its standard and corporate health insurance policies for individuals and small businesses.

As both heart disease and cancer have seen dramatic improvements in both the treatments available and survival rates, the insurer has seen fit to reflect this by providing cover for new treatments and drugs.

In addition, AXA will now be providing its successful “dedicated nurse service”, which supports the member and their family through the treatment process, to members with heart conditions.

The changes mean a much greater offering for members diagnosed with cancer, including covering all existing licensed cancer drugs, as well as experimental drugs when part of an ethically approved trial and consideration for experimental surgery which has been reviewed by the AXA PPP clinical team. Extra expenses for cancer treatment also include up to £5,000 for external prostheses and up to £150 for wigs.

The enhancements also see a scrapping of a number of time limits, including licensed cancer drug treatment, cancer follow-ups and out-patients cover for heart surgery treatments.

To find out more about the changes, visit the AXA Heart and Cancer Cover page

The media magazine Der Spiegel reported that lots of medical insurance organizations elevated the price of their policies at the start of 2012, and that is the main motivation for individuals to change.

The AOK, Germany’s largest public medical insurance group with close to 24 million customers, has recorded an increase in phone calls. Several other public insurers have noticed a comparable rise.

Germany has laws relating to medical insurance, and people are often only permitted to change amongst private and public policies in certain instances.

People who have lost their job are allowed to shift from national to private, just like people whose pay level drops beneath € 45,900. People moving from self-employed work to a full-time occupation which has a related pay may also be granted authorization to switch.

A different public health agency, Barmer GEK, has claimed that close to 27,600 people have made the switch to public health insurance from private this year. It’s a 9% increase on the figure reported in the previous year. 

Many people decide to give up alcohol for a month around this time of year however the British Liver Trust has questioned the value of this approach.

Staying away from alcohol for a month will not improve the health of the liver, and people will find far greater benefits simply by abstaining for a few days every week.

They described the detox method as a one-hit approach and advised that this was not the way to approach liver health.

If the liver has not previously been damaged it is capable of repairing itself over a very short period of time.

If people continue to drink regularly throughout the course of a year then a one month detox will be worthless in the long term.

People believe that because of the liver’s self healing ability they can cause damage throughout the year and repair the damage in one short burst, however a leading hepatologist has described this approach as ‘medically futile’.

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The Department of Health has announced that the government’s efficiency program has resulted in savings of £2.5bn in the first 6 months of the financial year.

The NHS remains on course to make savings of £5.9bn this financial year as part of the Qipp (Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention) programme. The overall aim of the programme is to deliver £20bn of savings by 2014-15, alongside an overall improvement in the standard of NHS services.

Andrew Lansey, the health secretary, believes that by making sure the NHS continues to get value for money they can continue to make significant savings without the need for cuts to services.

Typically the winter is the most challenging period for the NHS, however he believes that they will be able to continue providing a high quality of service despite the increased levels of efficiency.

The rising cost of drug treatments, coupled with an aging population, means they need to continue to find huge savings from within the current budget. There will be an increase in budget over the next four years but this is essentially an overall reduction in budget in real terms.

The Qipp program has come under a great deal of scrutiny, with many believing it places financial objectives ahead of patient safety.

The results allow doctors to assess how effective chemotherapy would be, as well as the likelihood the cancer will return.

The research, carried out in Wales, found that around 46% of those who met the criteria could be prevented from receiving unnecessary chemotherapy. There were 142 women included in the study, all with early stage oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer, who had initially been offered hormone therapy and chemotherapy.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is currently reviewing the test to see if it’s suitable for more widespread use on the NHS.

The test could potentially have a massive impact on the quality of care available, not to mention the huge improvements possible for treatment decision making.

Almost 50,000 women are diagnosed with the condition in the UK every year, so a test such as this could really assist in the treatment. It could also allow the NHS to spend its budget more effectively, preventing the outlay on unnecessary chemotherapy sessions.

According to various news reports of late, it looks like there could be a competition inquiry into private health care – with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) set to decide on whether to further investigate the private health market next year.

The OFTs criticisms of the industry include “information asymmetries” which it describes as a “shortage of accessible, standardised and comparable information” which “appears to weaken the ability of patients and GPs to drive efficiencies and stimulate enhanced competition between rival PH facilities and between consultants”.

It will be worth checking back on this and other health blogs come next year to see how this one develops. It certainly looks as if some of the big players agree on the level of competition, with the spokesperson for one of them agreeing that “more competition” is required in the industry.

The research from the NCEPOD also suggests that many hospitals are not well equipped for any surgical patients, no matter if they were high or low risk. The Data covered 300 UK hospitals throughout the UK from more than 19,000 patients. This was paired with a review of more than 80 high risk patients across the country.

Of the patients who had surgery only 22% were immediately sent to critical care. From the patients who were not sent to critical care in cases where experts believed they should, the mortality rate was around 3 times higher.

80 of the 165 high risk patients who died were never admitted to critical care. Even those initially admitted to wards before eventually being moved to critical care had a higher chance of dying than those sent immediately from surgery.

The study outlines some of the main reasons the UK’s results are so poor when compared to man developed countries, with the NCEPOD chairman describing the results as ‘disturbing’.

In a report released today there is a damning conviction of the NHS and identifies the need for radical changes within it.

The Adam Smith Institute has made suggestions on how to make improvements in order to improve the service and improve the quality of healthcare being provided by the NHS.  The report suggests that changing the current system as we know it to a social insurance scheme which would be funded by employer and employee contributions along with co-payments from patients.  The Institute believe this would create competition in order to improve health care quality but only doing so in a very limited and bureacratic way.

One suggestion made was to sell off all the hospitals to private firms which would in turn introduce competition and drive standards up as each firm would be keen to have the best quality of care and the best facilities.  The proceeds from the sales would be used to set up a health insurance fund.

The fund would be self financed through employer and employee  contributions and co-payments from patients.  With the NHS now no longer requiring a £105bn warchest the Treasury could afford to cut both direct and indirect taxes to offset the contributions patients would make to the health fund scheme.

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12 more US states have passed the first major threshold in setting up the controversial health insurance exchanges, 7 of which are presently suing the Obama administration in an attempt to have the new health care law overturned.

The exchanges are set to be launched in 2014, and are intended to provide insurance solutions to those less capable of funding a policy in the current market. Of particular focus are group health insurance policies for small businesses as well as affordable healthcare for those on a low income. If a state fails to set up the system by the 2014 deadline the federal government will take over the system and run it for them.

The seven states involved in the Supreme Court challenge are Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Nebraska – all of which have taken state funds to help set up the exchanges. The dozen new states to have reached this landmark join the 16 who reached this stage earlier in the year.

With the majority of Brits against the privatisation of the NHS there will clearly be anger that unelected peers, motivated by financial self interest, can be used to go against the national interest.

The second reading of the bill resulted in a record turnout of peers, with the largest number of votes cast at the modern House of Lords since 1993. Closer examination of the lists highlight many of those who voted for the bill were either lobbyists or stood to gain directly from the bill.