I'm in Canada, so I don't know how this applies. My perception was that in the UK the NHS covered medications.
But i've been working for a private insurance company for almost the last 10 years. My first two positions were in medical insurance. We actually don't make more profit in doing stuff like that, and generally avoid it. By far most plans are funded by the employer, and we make money by administering the plan. When a drug is not covered it's because the employer doesn't want it to be covered. My second position was doing overpayments and exceptions. In cases where a plan doesn't cover a medication the patient can get his or her doctor to send us a form showing what has been tried, what hasn't worked, and what they want to use the drug for. If all the other options have been exhausted and it's been approved by Health Canada to be used for treatment of the patient's illness, we usually (almost universally) approve it.
There's this misconception that we're greedy devils but nothing could be further from the truth. Two cases I remember from my time in that dept:
1) We had a growth hormone prescription for a kid. It was life sustaining but it wasn't indicated by Health Canada to be used to treat the kid's illness. The employer refused to cover it. Our director spent a day or two calling around until she got on the phone with the heads of the manufacturer. She managed to convince them to give the kid a free lifetime supply.
2) Last year we had a client in south east asia. He was very sick and very estranged from his family. He was stuck in a hospital and used up his out of country insurance. None of his family would help make arrangements to get him home, and he was too out of it to do anything himself. We paid for a private chartered plane with a nurse to go pick him up and being him home. There was no cost to him and we ate it because it was the right thing to do.
The two stories above were never printed in the media, no one has wrote about it in social media, and none of the people involved want any recognition what so ever. They're just interested in serving our clients. My bosses always had me ask myself the question "what's in the client's best interest" when making business decisions on reimbursements for fringe cases with no precedence. Even now, I work on the planning side of things, and the decisions we make are always customer focused. If we need to go over budget on hiring or overtime because the customer experience is suffering from slow turn around (cough Canada Post), we eat that cost and do what is right.
My mom also has COPD and is on the same medications. In her case because she's not employed, she's enrolled in provincial drug insurance programs. They pick up the bill and she just has to pay a small dispensing fee (here), and when she moved now it's a small annual deductible (something like $100 I think).
I can't speak for the UK, but here I think the problem is that people don't know their options or what steps they need to take to get the medication they need. The right to life is a constitutional right in this country, no one should ever die because of lack of medical coverage.
Edit: Another situation I just remember that's related to my last point. My aunt was diagnosed with Lupus and her insurance carrier is my employer. She was complaining about her drugs not being covered, costing so much, swearing about the company and saying things like "you need to go to your boss and tell him your company is .... and they are a bunch of scammers". I took 3 minutes to print off the medical exception forms, pointed to the sections her doctor needed to fill out, and the day of her appointment the request was filed, approved, and her drugs were reimbursed. Things look daunting from the outside, but I promise we're here to help.
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). Just finished a 300 mile wilderness hike over the summer. I'd have died on that trail 10 years ago. I have the lab work of a 20 year-old now. (Doc's own words). 
