The Wire

The New South Wales Cancer Council says 5-thousand patients are being denied radiotherapy each year because of a lack of facilities throughout the state. In some areas outside of Sydney, dying patients are being forced to pay up to 8-thousand dollars for treatment because private healthcare has a monopoly on the radiotherapy units. This means poorer sufferers have to travel long distances to public hospitals or go without the treatment altogether. Some resort to begging their doctors for help.