England to 'decentralize' National Health Plan!

[amicus]

I sat back and watched quietly as the 'usual suspects' failed to offer commentary on the Shirley Sherrod/NAACP racist controversy; not one of their finer moments.

Now the socialized medicine plan in Europe's finest, England, is in shambles, that same program American leftist adored and called, 'seductive'. The fault-line, as usual, exploding bureaucratic costs, fraud and corruption and increasinly poor performce as a health care provider.

Join the twenty or so States in American that have challenged the constitutionality of Obama care and toss this faulty program before it takes hold!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/world/europe/25britain.html

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

The rest of the two page article at the link provided.

Amicus

 

[Miss_Pixie]

Hmmm... that's food for thought, indeed.

 

[Songcatcher]

The Britsh really call that a "plan"?

 

[amicus]

Perhaps the crumbling of 'Centralized' government solving all the problems of a society will finally bring the concept into question. Oggbashan will come on shortly and inform us that all is well with the NHS, and we need not worry about a possible socialist agenda in America.



ami

 

[Songcatcher]

English people run down large hill, chasing cheese.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Perhaps the crumbling of 'Centralized' government solving all the problems of a society will finally bring the concept into question. Oggbashan will come on shortly and inform us that all is well with the NHS, and we need not worry about a possible socialist agenda in America.



ami

What socialists dont get is, if you take all of a hen's eggs she stops laying. They never have made the connection twixt money and incentive. And eventually they run out of other folks' money.

 

[TE999]

This development won't deter this bunch over here one iota. Harry Reid told the Netroot's convention attendees this weekend that the Public Option Healthcare Plan will be a reality, they just need to be patient.

After every failure of a Communist government, the Leftist intellectuals always say they 'Didn't try hard enough' or 'They didn't do it right'. Dimes to dollars that's what the Government Health Care advocates over here say about the implosion of the National Health Service.

"We're Americans gosh darn it, we can make Socialized Medicine work."

 

[oggbashan]

I will respond, as Amicus expects me to.

The UK's National Health Service is not perfect. It never has been.

However its intention and purpose is and has always been clear - to provide health care to everyone and anyone whether they can afford it or not.

Previous governments, left and right, have tinkered with the NHS. It is micromanaged with so many targets and reporting structures that the administration is impeding effective service delivery. Whether the Government's proposals will improve service delivery? I don't know.

In many fields, the best health care in the US is the best in the world, but what use is that if you are uninsurable and can't afford to pay the health care costs yourself?

What I do know is that universal health care in the UK costs proportionately much less per head of population than the US health care, which was not universal, nor affordable for many, before President Obama's changes. Whether the US changes will deliver affordable health care for all? I don't know.

Another fact I do know is that the UK's NHS system and almost every European country's health system delivers universal care at a far lower cost to their citizens than the US's system that is not universal.

A final fact: Improvement in techniques and systems for delivering health care and people's expectations from such treatment are always going to cost more than any possible budget for health care. The demand is infinite: the money supply isn't - no matter how the money is obtained, by taxes, by insurance or by paying by your employer or by yourself.

The good thing about the UK's NHS has remained since its inception - universal coverage. The bad things, monolithic structures, government interference, poor management systems - these come and go but do not change the NHS aim, just its effectiveness in delivering that aim.

Og

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

This development won't deter this bunch over here one iota. Harry Reid told the Netroot's convention attendees this weekend that the Public Option Healthcare Plan will be a reality, they just need to be patient.

After every failure of a Communist government, the Leftist intellectuals always say they 'Didn't try hard enough' or 'They didn't do it right'. Dimes to dollars that's what the Government Health Care advocates over here say about the implosion of the National Health Service.

"We're Americans gosh darn it, we can make Socialized Medicine work."

Socialism never works cuz it confiscates wealth and concentrates that wealth with the government and its elites. There can never be enough toiling peasants to keep a socialist regime alive and prosperous.

 

[Liar]

Socialism never works cuz it confiscates wealth and concentrates that wealth with the government and its elites. There can never be enough toiling peasants to keep a socialist regime alive and prosperous.

The problem with Socialism as well as Capitaism is that both depend on the uncorruprability of the people within the system. Neither has strong enough self correcting mechanisms.

The institutions of Socialism is not good enough to protect it against greed for wealth and power among the political elite that runs it. And laisses faire capitalism, although better, if only as a moral choice, is still doomed to a similar fate, because the same people who are the buerocrat bogeymen in a Rand nightmare would then be corporatists, segmenting and stagnating the market for conservation of financial power. And the better mousetrap would have a snowball's chance in hell. Capitalism would eat John Galt alive.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The problem with Socialism as well as Capitaism is that both depend on the uncorruprability of the people within the system. Neither has strong enough self correcting mechanisms.

The institutions of Socialism is not good enough to protect it against greed for wealth and power among the political elite that runs it. And laisses faire capitalism, although better, if only as a moral choice, is still doomed to a similar fate, because the same people who are the buerocrat bogeymen in a Rand nightmare would then be corporatists, segmenting and stagnating the market for conservation of financial power. And the better mousetrap would have a snowball's chance in hell. Capitalism would eat John Galt alive.

We agree! If you examine every government and economic system during the history of Earth all of them confiscate the wealth and power of the peasants and concentrate them in the government and its elites. A king by any other name is just as corrupt.

 

[Handley_Page]

English people run down large hill, chasing cheese.

Only a handful, and then under controlled conditions, once a year in celebration of the Cheese.


Further to Ogg's contribution, it has to be said that there is so much "management" in the NHS that some reform is long overdue (the same applies to the Police Force, with it's "Targets" and "Best Value" nonsense).

The essence or the UK system is that it is Free at the point of Delivery. Yes, there's a certain amount of argument about the price of some drugs and thus who should get them, but that will sort itself out; we hope.

"LONDON — Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate. "

Ye Gods she does write some twaddle. (Who's side is she on ?)
We do not have a "socialised" health care system, it is NOT in a permanent state of flux and they ain't looking for the illusive formula. It might be a little fluid at times, and costs obviously have to be looked at. When we all see the details of the "changes" big Dave wants to make, we might be in a better state to write about it with a certain clarity.
Meanwhile the newspapers spread their ill tidings, as usual.

 

[amicus]

Dear Oggbashan, Liar & Handley Page...I begin this with just a concept in my mind as to how address all three of you specifically and the issue in general, in such a way that even if you don't gain clarification, perhaps others will.

I do not fault your compassionate concern that all people, rich and poor, have equal access to quality medical care. I will even stipulate that I accept the sincerity of your concern and that it is no doubt well intentioned.

All of Europe, including Czarist Russia, emerged, more or less, from social conditions in which rich and poor were determined by birth and status. Perhaps I should also call into focus the history of war and conquest and occupation that reasches as far back in history as one can discover.

I offer that in an attempt to comprehend the European mindset as pertains to collective versus individual endeavors.

I reject, out of hand, Liar's apology for both free and slave States, that people simply are not morally 'good enough', to insure the success of either or any system. To dismiss the whole of humanity for the faults and failures of a few, a small percentage that is always with us, is to sentence to failure every cooperative effort by mankind. That is sad and somewhat sick in terms of mental attitude and philosophical, moral and ethical presumptions.

To return to 'Universal Healthcare', the phrase chosen to be as neutral as one can be, the concept is morally and ethically flawed from the beginning.

It is flawed because it violates an hierarchy of human values that begins with individual life and liberty, thus choice resides in the individual concerning all human actions.

The imposition of an health care plan on any given society involves the use of force or coercion in at least two ways: first, you must compel the providers of medical service to accede to your demands and accept your terms; second, you must impose taxation upon the public at large to fund such services.

A cardinal rule of a free society is that you are forbidden to use force or coercion to accomplish your goals or end result regardless of how beneficial your plan may be.

There is a third and compelling reason to reject the concept of Universal Healthcare, as illustrated by the referenced failure in England. The reason involves pragmatism and empirical data that both illustrate why such utopian dreams must fail. All governments hire employees to carry out the legislation approved or imposed by its' leaders. These 'employee's' are identified as 'bureaucrats', because the definition of a bureaucrat involves one who carries out orders, enforces rules and regulations without conscious or cognitive functions.

These employees, by defintion, are not vested in the performance or outcome of their labors; they merely perform the functions of the office with no benefit or penalty accruing as to how well or how poorly they carry out their tasks.

As much as proponents of Altruism exhort, without personal benefit, the profit motive, there is no motivation to perform above the level of the lowest common denoinator.

A fourth and final reason that all such collective ventures must inevitably fail, is that the institutions of government are constructed and maintained so as to expand both the size and scope of the agency or department involved.

Union control and protectionism makes it almost impossible to dispose of a poor employee and, in their own best interests, they continually press for higher salaries and wages and benefit programs, including retirement perquisites, that outstip and exceep that which the tax paying public that supports them can achieve in the private sector.

I often wonder why some advocates of collective or semi collective schemes reject the free market solution since the success of the market place is so obvious in so many places.

Is it perhaps that few have ever been exposed to the mechanics of the market place? Is the term, 'profit motive,' so horrific, that you will not even consider it as a moral virtue?

I would also offer that the Medical profession, world wide, acts as one interconnected, giant Union or old fahioned Guild Society. The profession allows only so many practitioners in any given year and limits the number of medical students in universities around the world to maintain the high price and cost of medical service.

I suppose it is an object of irony then, that these privileged Doctors are in fact 'drafted' into compulsory service in all Universal Health Plans, perhaps they deserve to be enslaved after all?

Amicus....not without a sense of humor....

 

[TE999]

Socialisim and Communisim derive their power from four basic human failings: greed, envy, sloth and overweening pride.

If someone (such as a dictator) or something (such as a government) promises people they will 'share the wealth', assures everyone they will receive the basic necessities of life, commiserates with their problems and flatters them excessively they have their unswerving allegiance.

Getting 'something for nothing' is an irresistable lure, so is getting 'even'. Politicians have known this for centuries and use it regularly to get votes and gain power. This 'Health Care for All' twaddle is a classic example of the politics of Socialisim in action.

 

[coldsteel]

From a surgeon who works here in the US of A.

26 year old man shows up in the ER with appendicitis, no health insurance and no money. He represents costs that will not be reimbursed and risks that if he has a complication everyone gets sued.

Are all y'all suggesting that we give him aspirin, let the thing burst, let him become septic and die?

86 year old woman brought from the nursing home, demented,bedridden and with a pneumonia that will take her life quickly and painlessly. Family demands "do everything--she paid into Medicare". So is this really the best use of scarce resources?

 

[djserani]

From a surgeon who works here in the US of A.

26 year old man shows up in the ER with appendicitis, no health insurance and no money. He represents costs that will not be reimbursed and risks that if he has a complication everyone gets sued.

Are all y'all suggesting that we give him aspirin, let the thing burst, let him become septic and die?

That's exactly what people like these are suggesting, coldsteel. They don't care. All they care about is not having to give up their money.

 

[amicus]

From a surgeon who works here in the US of A.

26 year old man shows up in the ER with appendicitis, no health insurance and no money. He represents costs that will not be reimbursed and risks that if he has a complication everyone gets sued.

Are all y'all suggesting that we give him aspirin, let the thing burst, let him become septic and die?

86 year old woman brought from the nursing home, demented,bedridden and with a pneumonia that will take her life quickly and painlessly. Family demands "do everything--she paid into Medicare". So is this really the best use of scarce resources?[/QUOTE]

~~~

You might care to clarify your theme; from what I read you are then favoring Universal Healthcare?

If indeed you are a surgeon in the USA, you already know that both cases you exampled would be treated fully at any institution in the US in the emergency room.

Under England's National Healthplan, children under three and seniors over 60, have their care rationed. I heard that today on the news but have been unable to document it, but when health care is rationed on a 'cost/benefit' ratio, the young and the old are the first to be left without care.

'Scarce resources', are a product of the Medical Fraternity that works to limit the number of doctors and nurses to keep their salaries high. If you want a Big Mac, resources are never limited, the market place will and does provide.

If you feel the ancient pull of 'Noblesse Oblige', in which the well to do feel an obligation to care for and donate to the less privileged, then by all means, help and donate as much as you wish.

Just keep your hands out of my pockets, okay? Oh, and welcome to the forum!



Amicus

 

[Seduc1ove]

We are all promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is pretty hard to claim someone has life or liberty if they are sick and have no ability to get medical care. It is also pretty hard to pursue happiness. Just as police protection, infrastructure, and education are all necessary provisions from the government to allow us our inalienable rights so is healthcare.

Also, just because someone says "spread the wealth" doesn't mean equally. If an extremely wealthy person stands to make 4 million and instead is only given 1 and the other 3 are spread among other poorer individuals the incentive for making 1 million still exists. And when the majority of the country makes less in their entire lifetime than a few make in a day I'd say it needs to be spread back out a little.

 

[amicus]

We are all promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is pretty hard to claim someone has life or liberty if they are sick and have no ability to get medical care. It is also pretty hard to pursue happiness. Just as police protection, infrastructure, and education are all necessary provisions from the government to allow us our inalienable rights so is healthcare.

Also, just because someone says "spread the wealth" doesn't mean equally. If an extremely wealthy person stands to make 4 million and instead is only given 1 and the other 3 are spread among other poorer individuals the incentive for making 1 million still exists. And when the majority of the country makes less in their entire lifetime than a few make in a day I'd say it needs to be spread back out a little.[/QUOTE]

~~~

You are promised nothing by no one. 'life, liberty, property' are all innate, unalienable rights that you may pursue, as an individual. This particular gathering of men wrote that they will mutually 'protect' your rights, not give them to you nor help you accomplish the fruit of those rights.

You got one out of three right, our Constitution authorizes government to protect you with a police force and an army, but not to provide you with an infrastructure or schools, and certainly not healthcare.

And when the majority of the country makes less in their entire lifetime than a few make in a day I'd say it needs to be spread back out a little

Only children believe that life is fair; it is not. Fully half of all humans born come into this world with a less than average IQ; they will seldom find a way to make your vaunted million dollars.

There are many about the world who have chosen to sacrifice a little personal freedom for a guarantee that society will take care of their needs. They soon regret that decision as they discover the loss of personal esteem and identity, is more than they can bear. Humans are not born to be hive insects.

Maybe you can snag a millionaire who earned his money and help him spend it?

Amicus

 

[patrick1]

So that Ogg may have a few hours off, let me step in for a moment with a note from the uk.

Amicus uses the word 'fail' and 'failure' repeatedly about the UK health system. He doesn't however explain by what criteria it fails. I should like to know what these criteria are. Life expectancy is higher in the UK, and indeed in most European countries, than in the USA. Health care is free at the point of delivery. Health care is cheaper per head, partly because the supposedly 'bureaucratic' British system spends a lower proportion of health spending on non-clinicians - a free market means that a number of competing insurance companies each has their own bureaucracy to feed.

The reference to the effect of cost-benefit analysis is a part-error. The relatively affluent elderly do indeed lose out on a cost-benefit versus market-force system, although none of the scaremongering about 'death panels' has any basis in fact; but the very young of all incomes and classes except the super-rich gain on cost-benefit, since their potential futures are factored in.

Patrick

 

[Seduc1ove]

Last time I checked our government provides both infrastructure and schools. While I understand your argument that you don't believe the government provides us with our inalienable rights I suppose you would probably turn around in another argument and state the government does provide us with rights to free speech, right to bear arms, freedom of religion. Or perhaps you'd like to argue that they simply "protect" those rights with the police and military, but are not obliged to ensure you actually get them as if that were a valid argument. You can't have it both ways either they are supposed to ensure you get your rights or they just keep you from dying and best of luck to you.

When 40% of the wealth is owned by 1% of the people and only 7% by the lower 80% of people the system is not allowing for people to get their fair share of it. Only optimistic people or perhaps those that care about more in this world than money believe that life should be fair or at least more fair to all or at least as many as possible. No one asked anyone to give up rights or freedoms, but rather just some of that enormous amount of wealth they have horded and used to amass more wealth while claiming it is "unfair" for someone to tax or ask for any of it. Again, though, I assume you would probably argue for a flat tax on the basis that it is "fair".

Our system is the best in the world for the simple reason that we try to strike a delicate balance between balancing wealth to all or at least a majority of the people while at the same time leaving ability to earn and incentive to work hard. The balance shifts back and forth depending on who is in power and only someone ignorant would argue that it shouldn't exist at all. The debate is how far either way should we go and being someone who cares about others and believes in humanity I think we are at a point where too much wealth is concentrated in too few. What incentive does someone have to work hard when they know that they'll slave away at a job that pays minimum wage or little above while watching the top guys sit in their office talking on a phone making more than they could ever dream? You have to give everyone hope that they can make at least a decent amount of wealth and provide for themselves. The incentive argument applies to more than just the wealthy elite.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The problem is: 44% of Congress are millionaires and 1% of Americans are millionaires. People elected to Congress earn $170K per year, stick around 20 years, and have millions in the bank.

There's no way in Hell that rich Congressmen look out for average Americans; they look out for their wealthy cohort, the elites who bribe them to keep the masses down and limit competition.

Every government agency is a club to whack the enemies of their elite patrons.

 

[Liar]

I reject, out of hand, Liar's apology for both free and slave States, that people simply are not morally 'good enough', to insure the success of either or any system. To dismiss the whole of humanity for the faults and failures of a few, a small percentage that is always with us, is to sentence to failure every cooperative effort by mankind. That is sad and somewhat sick in terms of mental attitude and philosophical, moral and ethical presumptions.

For the record. These are your extrapolations on some hyperbolic and wildly fallacious tangent. Not what I think. Nor what I said.

Anyway, don't let that stop you. It never does.

 

[Seduc1ove]

The problem is: 44% of Congress are millionaires and 1% of Americans are millionaires. People elected to Congress earn $170K per year, stick around 20 years, and have millions in the bank.

There's no way in Hell that rich Congressmen look out for average Americans; they look out for their wealthy cohort, the elites who bribe them to keep the masses down and limit competition.

Every government agency is a club to whack the enemies of their elite patrons.

True, although I think it is 1% that are billionaires or greater. Another 53% of wealth is concentrated in another 19% of the population and I assume those would be the six figure salaries and millionaires, but that is just an assumption. Our only choice is to work within the system we have which is the best created so far in the world and try to make it as equitable and worthwhile as we can for all fellow Americans.

 

[oggbashan]

...

Now the socialized medicine plan in Europe's finest, England, is in shambles, that same program American leftist adored and called, 'seductive'. The fault-line, as usual, exploding bureaucratic costs, fraud and corruption and increasinly poor performce as a health care provider.

...

Amicus

As I have said many times before, the NHS is only one way of obtaining Health Care in the UK.

We have a choice. We can use the NHS. We can buy Health Insurance. We can join a Mutual Society that provides Health Care Benefits. We can pay for Health Care ourselves. Or, we can mix and match to suit the specific need.

Of course, alternatives to the NHS assume that we have money. If we don't have money then the NHS will still provide Health Care.

Amicus' rants about doctors being forced to work in the NHS are as faulty as many of his arguments. The training of doctors is almost exclusively within the NHS, but after they have completed their training, the qualified doctors are free to apply for work in other Health Care providers.

One of my daughters is a doctor in a specialised field for which she has post-graduate qualifications and experience. She does NOT work within the NHS. Her husband is a highly qualified medical specialist, a Ph.D in his field, but not a medical doctor. He doesn't work within the NHS. Both of them are sometimes asked to work with NHS patients who need their specialist services. If so, the NHS pays them as independent contractors.

All three major UK political parties support the principle of the NHS providing universal health care. What they differ about is how the NHS should operate to provide that universal care. The current UK government's suggestions, yet to be worked up into consultation proposals, are to reduce the amount of government interference in the NHS. It is an attempt to make government smaller. Amicus ought to support that view, yet his blinkered antagonism to anything that provides health care for all won't let him.

As I said above, the UK's NHS isn't the only European example of universal health care. What almost all the European examples share is a universal provision of health care at a much lower cost per head of population that the pre-Obama system in the US which did not provide universal health care.

The costs of the US health industry are massive compared with almost every other country yet some of the citizens are denied reasonable care. How the US should solve the problem? I don't know, but Amicus' views are an indication of how divisive health care politics are in the US.

Og