Health Policies in Britain - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... One of the main focuses of the debate is health policy, something which affects people of all ages, education levels and incomes. Additionally, different areas of one country may have very different disease rates, and so it makes sense to have separate healthcare policies for each of these areas to benefit the patients involved. There are several differences between the services provided in England and Wales, and the purpose of this essay is to explore these, including the different pricing ranges. It will also explore the differences in the results of the healthcare in England and Wales, by showing some of the main disease rates which may be a direct result of the different healthcare policies in the two countries. It will then look into these policies to show that they are significant differences that may have an effect on people’s lives, and then see what the impact of these differences in policy may have. Analysis of these differences is very important to creating good policies that are of benefit to everyone (Wennberg et al, 1987), so there are several different analysis tools that are discussed below which can help readers to understand why the differences between England and Wales and their NHS services are so important. ...
This means that each area of the National Health Service (NHS) can put money where it is most needed, which does tend to be different between each area of the U.K. For example, lung cancer is higher in Scotland than England (HFII, 2011), so having more centres, treatments and scanning places in Scotland makes more sense. It has been suggested that Wales has made the most changes in NHS policy since devolution in 1997 (Greer, 2009). Some of these changes include getting rid of car parking fees in hospitals, and getting rid of prescription. This means that the NHS costs less to people using it in Wales than England. England still charges ?7.40 for a prescription (Bevan & Hood, 2006), and car parking charges are decided by the hospital itself, meaning that any trip to the doctor or hospital is unlikely to be free. One of the main aims of the NHS is to provide service that is free at the point of use, so these hidden charges can often be seen as a negative aspect of the English NHS. Interestingly, Scotland has followed Wales in getting rid of prescription charges (Greer, 2009) whilst the price in England keeps rising. This again suggests that those in Wales and Scotland can benefit from cost-free medications when this would not be available to them in England, something which could cause migration to border areas. These are not the only differences between healthcare services in England and Wales. Dental care is one of the areas where the two countries are very different, with dental care being free until the age of 26 in Wales and almost 50% cheaper than England (Webb et al, 2010). NHS dental costs have been rising in England for a while, but have been frozen in Wales for five years (NHS Wales, 2006). NHS dental care has been widely talked about in recent years, ...Download file to see next pagesRead More