TREATMENT on the NHS for a snoring-related condition is back on again for East Lancashire sufferers - now that health bosses have agreed to pay for it once more.

The decision is hailed as a victory by the watchdog Community Health Council. After they and family doctors and consultants protested at the health authority's withdrawal of funding for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea cases, the climbdown is acclaimed as a classic example of public pressure winning the day.

Perhaps, but is this case not also an instance of patients and their representatives having to battle with the purse-string pullers in the NHS when clinical need, not cash, should be the real deciding factor in who gets treated? For even now, with this victory acclaimed, the health authority seems set to limit how much of this treatment they will buy as referring doctors are warned to be selective in seeking it for their patients.

Cash concerns may be one of their guidelines, but is not another worrying factor also at work - that of interference in the clinical judgment of the patients' doctors?

For when another party can cast doubt on the necessity or efficacy of a treatment a GP or a consultant thinks a patient should have, does it not amount to a semi-hijacking by the health authority of the patient, and perhaps with the thought of how much his or her treatment will cost prevailing over what is best for him or her?

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