I wasn’t expecting to be back posting on the NHS but a recent article on the Heritage Foundation site caught my attention. I thought you might like reading it. http://blog.heritage.org/2009/09/07/a-false-idol/

A False Idol

Posted September 7th, 2009 at 9.00am in American Leadership, Health Care.

The National Health Service is like a deity in Britain. Or so we are told. Irish actor and director, Graham Linehan – a very funny man – has taken to defending the NHS by saying that American criticisms of it are “like if you criticize your parents. You can do it – but if anyone else criticized them you’d murder them.” That’s not going to keep life expectancies up. The Economist, for its part, offers up the plea “God save the NHS.” So much for the Queen, apparently.

There is something distinctly off-putting in this worshipful attitude. The NHS is not the English Bill of Rights, or the First Amendment. It is not a statement of eternal truths. It is a bureaucratic organization intended to serve a particular purpose. If it does not serve that purpose well, then it should be changed. The outraged responses to American – and British – criticisms of the NHS have a calculated political purpose: to reject the very thought that the government should not be responsible for running the entire health care system.

But the criticisms keep on coming. Yesterday saw the leaking of a report by McKinsey, the consulting firm. McKinsey had been asked to advise the NHS on how it could save 20 billion pounds – about 35 billion dollars – by 2013/14. That’s only three budget cycles away, so saving that kind of money is a tough target. McKinsey’s conclusion: “NHS hospitals in England are rife with waste and inefficiency,” with low staff productivity, too many admissions, wasteful procurement, and heavy debt burdens thanks to bad financing.

The problem with financing comes as no surprise: the British armed forces suffer from a similar problem. What is really surprising is where the cuts in the NHS will come. According to McKinsey, the NHS needs to lose 137,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce. While 30,000 administrators will go, so will over 100,000 medical professionals. Medical school places would be reduced to avoid an “oversupply” of doctors, and older doctors and nurses will be encouraged to retire. Acute care will be the hardest hit: McKinsey projects it will lose 38% of its budget. There would be further savings if procedures with “limited clinical benefit” – such as tonsillectomies, varicose vein removal and some hysterectomies – were decommissioned.

The government, to put it politely, has not given McKinsey’s proposals a terribly enthusiastic reception. But dilemmas like this one are what you get when you let the government run the entire health care system: either you pay for everything, at the cost of untold inefficiencies and an eternal struggle to balance the books, or you decide that things would be much more affordable if you let some more doctors go and cut back on the tonsillectomies. Not an enviable choice. Britain may treat the NHS as a deity, but the McKinsey report reveals, yet again, why single-payer systems are a false idol.

Foxmudar comment: Well it seems that when the consulting firm McKinsey gives their thoughts on cutting spending, the British government brushes it aside. And of course if they were to implement the changes by cutting 100,000 medical personal, well we all know who suffers in the end. I would expect similiar moves by the Obama Administration if he gets his Public Option plan in operation. Right now Obama and his Socialist/Democratic party are once again trying a new tactic. They are calling it the a Trigger. Basically if insurance companies don’t meet up to the standards or rules the Democratic congress applies to the Trigger. Then the Trigger is pulled and the Public option is installed. Geez when you can make the rules that gurantee Insurances companies won’t reach those goals, its easy to see the final outcome. Government Run healthcare. Add 40 to 50 Million uninsured suddenly to the insured list. and the waiting line to see a doctor has got to become very long.

Its a holiday here in the states, Labor day. It was once a day to celebrate the working man. Now its just another day for Obama to suck up to his Union buddies. Oh did I mention that if Obamacare passes, the Unions get $10 Billion for their underfunded retirement healthcare programs. Geez isn’t it nice how bribes can go a long way.

Foxmuldar

As for alternative views to his, you mentioned him versus three people here saying the NHS is actually quite good. To those three you can add the several thousand who joined the #welovethenhs campaign on Twitter.

As I say, I couldn’t care less about what America does with its health service, and long ago gave up following American politics due to the sheer insanity and rabid partisanship of most of the debates (this bizarre insistence you seem to have in the states that your political opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re actively evil makes me despair for humanity – it’s just so blatantly, childishly stupid). But accusing the NHS of being “evil” as Sarah Palin did is taking it too far. It’s none of her business and none of America’s business to attack the NHS – especially when the attacks are based upon lies.

The NHS isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a perfect health service – there are all kinds of problems bubbling under the surface. But it works nicely for us, and – as far as I’m concerned, most importantly – covers the *entire* population (including foreigners on holiday here, “illegals”, you name it) for a lower per capita cost than the US is currently forking out on its non-universal healthcare system.

The moral? People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Foxmuldar: The NHS doesn’t discriminate between patients either, and immigration, legal or not, for health care to the UK has long been a bone of contention among politicians and the public. As I’m sure you’ll find if you look into it a little, immigration itself is quite an emotional topic in the UK; we recently had two rather right wing Ministers elected to the European Parliament. I don’t think the problem in the US is mendacity (as mentioned) so much as partisanship, misrepresentation and sometimes flagrant abuse of the truth. It seems that Democrats are often too unwilling to listen to Republicans, and vice versa; I’ve seen a few debates on the issue and there is always an unbridgable gap between the Democrat and Republican speaker (last one I saw was Tommy Thomson Elizabeth Edwards duking it out and agreeing on virtually nothing). It seems that not only are the priorities of both parties wildly different, they appear often to be wildly misunderstood and strongly opposed by the other party (as opposed to accepting the situation and cooperating for the improvement of the nation).

Of course I’m no expert in US politics, but it would often appear more like the two parties are there to consistently undermine each other, and perhaps the only thing stopping full blown war is civility, or the scar of ’61-’65. I’ve seen comments from both sides, and it seems more than just friendly sparring; death threats, plans for insurrection and lynching to name but a few. As for going crazy, we’re all pretty much there anyway.

Ok thats it for me on this Healthcare thing. Im going crazy now. I’ll need healthcare shortly. lol

Cheerio!

Frankly I’m not a big fan of US politics, if you’re right wing you’re automatically a gun toting devout Christian nazi nutcase, and if you’re left wing you’re a pinko communist fag who wants to murder children and kill anyone who earns money, and the partisan propaganda that comes with each is just a little too much too handle. Again, if you check out The Fox Nation, you’ll see what I’m referring to, and it’s the rabidity, lies and reactionism that leave me unable to either care, or cast any valid judgement on anything American. However, when it comes to the NHS, nobody gets the right to slam it without paying their £6 a year!

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/24/morning-bell-myths-and-facts-about-obamacare/

Worth checking out.

According to a 2005 US government census, the average American family of 2.5 paid nearly $2700 on medical insurance. The median American family of 2 parents and 2 children had a poverty line of $20,000 in 2005 according to research provided by the Economic Policy Institute, thus suggesting that the same family would spend nearer $4000 on health insurance ( (2700/2.5)x4). This would total just under $2400 for a family to live on the poverty line with health insurance (though premiums have slyrocketed since then). According to the US census bureau’s 2007 finding, pre financial crisis, almost 25 (probably about 23.5)% of Americans earned less than 25,000 a year. However, the median household size of this demographic was 2.14, inclining slightly more towards larger families. So, on the basis of the average four person family, around 13-15% of US citizens are unable to afford health insurance prior to the financial crisis, i.e. 45 million people (based on outdated statistics).

Further to your comments, should earners in the 50-75,000 bracket also forego health insurance to counterbalance mortgage payments, the same 2007 statistics from the US census bureau show that you have 26.86% of the American population who are able to live with health insurance; a damning statistic.

As regards the banking crisis, the mismanagement of this sector took place under the same administration that is now criticising the concept of free health care. As such, one must ask, as an objective European with a background in history and with no stake or interest in furthering the ends of either American political party, why it is that you trust the same administration which has costed thousands of Americans such as yourself their jobs through the aforementioned mismanagement of the financial sector, and has left you probably quite near the poverty line, likely without the means to make ends meet, let alone cover yourself against a workplace accident, to properly represent you in any branch of government, let alone present you with unbiased facts and arguments.

I can assure you, living in two countries which currently have public health care systems, that public health care:
a) Does not kill people for any reason at all
b) Does not kill of the private sector
c) Does not create socialism etc.

I have trouble seeing why public healthcare is met with such staunch opposoition, and I have trouble understanding why you would be so uncaring to the opposing political party to the one that has caused many of the problems of which you have spoken.