The unreasonable man

Whereas back in UK the 1.7million-person cost containment system known as the NHS continues to frustrate all who encounter it, both within and without.

I've long been of the view that the scarcest resource in the entire network is human energy required of a health care professional who will fight for the good of the patient.  This is not to say that there's malice or even negligence at work but rather an inertia that elevates older and cheaper therapies over newer, more expensive ones.  Doctors are soothingly told to be reasonable, to avoid cruelly raising a patient's expectations with talk of state-of-the-art treatments.  All of which brings to mind the great GBS: -

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw

Which is certainly true of the NHS; drug budget blow-outs are avoided due to the reasonableness (read: exhaustion) of the staff.  An entirely unspoken aspect of the British pharma representative's job is to locate that rare unreasonable man.