Finance trumps patients at every level – UK healthcare needs an inquiry | Aseem Malhotra

The healthcare system faces a crisis of trust; ill-informed doctors and poor research are harming patients

The healthcare system is facing failure, rooted in an epidemic of misinformed doctors and patients.

During a recent keynote lecture at the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation annual conference, I gave the example of a man who had had a heart attack and been given statins and whose months of disabling muscle pain resolved within a week of stopping taking them. His elation was cut short when his GP told him he must never stop his statin or he could die. When the audience was asked to guess what his risk of death was from stopping the pill for two weeks, the first response was 25%. There were gasps when I revealed it was actually between zero and one in 10,000.