Healthcare Reimbursement

The petition is entitled make provision to financially reimburse anyone that may be denied state provided healthcare and the explanatory notes say

"If this government intends to restrict healthcare based on an individuals lifestyle choices such as obesity or smoking it is reasonable to expect that if that person is or has been a taxpayer they are entitled to be reimbursed all past and future contributions to NHS funding as a proportion of their total tax burden so that they may make their own healthcare provisons."

This is, presumably, about a Labour Party plan (explanation in a BBC article) to allow patients to sign "health contracts" whereby, say, a person who wanted nicotine patches to help them to give up smoking would agree to attend a course to help them to give up. This does not yet appear to be Labour policy, only something that might be in the next manifesto. So "this government" would not appear to have any such plans. Consequently, campaigning to "this Prime Minister" might seem a little foolish.

Of course, the petitioner could have got the wrong end of the stick, and be complaining about doctors' entirely justifiably refusing surgery to someone whose health is so poor (as a consequence of their weight or their smoking or whatever) that the surgery is more dangerous than not-surgery. (Again, there's a BBC article about this.) I feel rather strongly that doctors and surgeons need to have this right. I was very angry when my grandfather, who was overweight and had heart troubles, but insisted on having a general anaesthetic for his knee replacement. It was frankly extremely dangerous for him to have a general anaesthetic in his physical condition, and completely unnecessary - except that he insisted. Fortunately it was all OK, but it was a foolish and unnecessary risk.

As far as I understand it, the "health contracts" plan would relate only to treatment highly specific to the condition (obesity, smoking-addiction, whatever), not to any other NHS treatment. So the "reimbursement" plan of the petition seems entirely unnecessary. But then - the petition itself sounds like the knee-jerk reaction of someone who's unaware of what's actually being proposed and who by.