the NHS has got to have some level of sovereign immunity. Does it? (I don't know of anyone suing NICE, but they've certainly brought lawsuits against GP practi

the NHS has got to have some level of sovereign immunity. Does it? (I don't know of anyone suing NICE, but they've certainly brought lawsuits against GP practices and hospital trusts, and won substantial damages for malpractice and/or judgements requiring the provision of treatment that was at first denied on various grounds.) Meanwhile, the NHS bodies that deliver healthcare -- be they PCTs or fundholding GP practices -- don't have a profit incentive for excluding people with pre-existing medical conditions from receiving treatment. (They may have a cost control incentive to for denying anomalously expensive treatments, but that kicks in at the opposite end of the supply-and-demand chain: and it's defended by reference to metrics like quality-adjusted life-years per unit expenditure rather than the requirement to show a profit.) Finally, the "loser pays" rule has been greatly undermined by the widespread adoption of conditional-fee lawsuits for civil damages in the UK over the past decade.