Britain's Health Care Gap

Under increasing political pressure to treat the UK's health care problems, British Prime Minister Tony Blair this week announced an additional $28 billion in funding over the next four years for more doctors, nurses, medicine and care for the elderly.

The new funding is designed to close a gap in coverage by Britain's National Health Service, the 52-year-old system that treats everyone for free, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

The government admits that in some cases, the care a Briton gets depends on where he or she lives. Residents of poorer neighborhoods have higher rates of cancer and lower survival rates.
The geographic disparities reflect the system's frugal funding.

Compared to most other industrialized countries, Britain has fewer cancer specialists, spends less on drugs and devotes less of its national income to medicine.

Graham Tarling's case is one example of the medical roulette faced by the critically ill all over the United Kingdom. Seven months ago, when British doctors discovered Tarling's kidney cancer, they told him to prepare to die.

"The surgery here was felt to be too risky to my life and people did not have the skills and did not want to put me at that risk," he said.

Tarling turned to the Internet and found a doctor at the Cleveland clinic in Ohio willing to perform the surgery.

"A ray of hope began to emerge that we could go to America, possibly, for treatment, but it would be very costly," he said.

The cost of the 13-hour operation—more than $45,000—was paid by NHS. Tarling is recuperating at home, undergoing chemotherapy and his prospects for recovery are good.

The question for other patients in Britain is whether Blair's prescription for the NHS improves its condition.

"The truth is, there are gaps between the health of the poorest and the better off," Blair said this week, promising that, "there will be a national framework of standards which will lay down minimum standards of access and care to which patients will be entitled."