Wednesday, April 21, 2010

MVNHS©: Sex and Drugs (But no Rock and Roll)

The bad news for (certain) Brits is that Big Pharma, um, Biggies Novartis and Roche are looking for the exit as the Much Vaunted National Health Service© continues to flex its muscles. There are several issues at stake, the two most prominent being a conflict in how much the firms can charge for their products; the other issue arises because the approval process for new meds is perceived to be "too expensive and bureaucratic."

The result: a potential loss of some 5,000 jobs, and the financial benefits that accrue therefrom.

The good news is that, despite (because of?) rationing for medically necessary services (and savings from actual medications), the MVNHS© apparently has all kinds of extra money lying around, all the better to ensure that transgendered Brits are, um, served:

"The number of sex change operations carried out on the NHS has almost tripled in the last eight years."

These numbers are a bit skewed, since the ratio of men becoming women to women becoming men is roughly 70:1. And I'm not going to get any more detailed than that.

At about $15,000 a pop, that translates to some $2 million for this apparently vital public health service.

Guess there's no pill for that, now.

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