England to 'decentralize' National Health Plan!

[Scotsman69]

George Orwell (Eric Blair)

Orwell was a socialist for much of his adult life. He was also fiercely anti-Stalinist, in part from his experiences fighting for the elected left Government during the Spanish Civil War. (See Homage to Catalonia.)

Writing The Road to Wigan Pier led him to closely investigate at first hand, health conditions in working-class communities in the north of England, and this was coupled with meticulous library research. The book and his other writings helped boost the campaign for socialised medicine in the UK in the decade before it was introduced, and so played a part in bringing it about.

So to use Orwell in a diatribe against socialised medicine is a very ignorant thing to do.

There are hundreds of millions of active socialists in the world, who struggle against ignorance for a more just society, who know that much of what happened in the communist world had nothing to do with socialism. Orwell was but one of them.

He was no less a socialist for that. And to get back to the point of the thread, he worked hard, especially in the last decade of his short life, to see the realisation of socialised healthcare in the UK. And just lived to see its inception. The TB which killed him arose precisely because he grew up in a world in which there was no socialised healthcare. It is well-documented that he couldn't seek medical help for his condition, because not until after the publication of Animal Farm could he afford it.

By then it was too late. George Orwell was just one of millions of victims of chequebook medicine.

Since Eric Blair's name has come up...

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

'Animal Farm', 1945

And that, boys and girls is why utopian Socialism (and it's half-brother Communisim)never works and never will work...for very long anyway.

 

[TE999]

So to use Orwell in a diatribe against socialised medicine is a very ignorant thing to do.

I have used Blair's words, not his life history or motivations, in order to illustrate a point. There never will be equality among men, in Medicine or anything else, unless all men are kept at the same level and independence is discouraged...and there'll always be a ruling elite as most people would rather follow than lead.

Questioning the wisdom of Socialized medicine is not a diatribe, it's an opinion. You may be satisfied with your lot as it's all you know, but there are others such as myself who are not willing to leave our health and destiny in the hands of feckless politicians and faceless bureaucrats.

Living in a Socialist/Welfare state may be comforting, but it's another form of indentured servitude, as many in Europe and the UK are beginning to discover. The remaining capitalist geese have stopped laying golden eggs and those dependent upon them are starting to feel the pinch.

 

[oggbashan]

TE999 - questioning the cost of commercially provided medicine as a comparison with "socialised" medicine is also an opinion.

We in the UK couldn't afford the US system for two reasons:

1. It costs far too much.

2. It is inefficient because it excludes so many people.

Your health and destiny are in the hands of faceless insurance executives.

We at least can challenge the decisions of our health service through our elected representatives and if necessary, the media. Who can effectively challenge an insurance company's decision to refuse treatment, to deny cover, or to raise an individual's premium to an unaffordable level?

Og

 

[djserani]

TE999 - questioning the cost of commercially provided medicine as a comparison with "socialised" medicine is also an opinion.

We in the UK couldn't afford the US system for two reasons:

1. It costs far too much.

2. It is inefficient because it excludes so many people.

Your health and destiny are in the hands of faceless insurance executives.

We at least can challenge the decisions of our health service through our elected representatives and if necessary, the media. Who can effectively challenge an insurance company's decision to refuse treatment, to deny cover, or to raise an individual's premium to an unaffordable level?

Og

These thread remind me of why I wish I could move to the UK...

 

[oggbashan]

...

Living in a Socialist/Welfare state may be comforting, but it's another form of indentured servitude, as many in Europe and the UK are beginning to discover. The remaining capitalist geese have stopped laying golden eggs and those dependent upon them are starting to feel the pinch.

The difference between the US and the European democracies is not between capitalism and socialism, but between ways of raising and spending taxation. All the European states are basically capitalist but their governments, by popular mandate, provide things from taxation that are not provided in the US.

The indentured servitude to an employer is the same. The power of a popular vote is the same. The electorates in the UK, and most European states, have a different set of priorities. That doesn't make them "socialist" - just different.

Og

 

[Scotsman69]

You may be satisfied with your lot...

Indeed, it's all I have known personally. But I know my family history intimately. Know that her parents took my mother to the dentist as a teenager to have all her teeth extracted, because only the very rich could afford continuing dentists' bills before we had socialised medicine. And that was very common in her generation.

Know that my grandfather died early from the results of a WW1 wound, because he couldn't afford the medical bills to have it properly treated.

Don't give me your sanctimonious shit. Lives and human welfare are more important than ideological dogma. In any country. I'm very grateful I live in a culture in which any politician standing for office on a Privatise Medicine ticket, would get fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. In any constituency.

PS: It's easy to use words out of context. I bet you didn't even trouble to discover Blair/Orwell was a socialist who campaigned for socialised medicine, when you quoted him. Were I to quote US writers against you, I'd be very sure of my ground before I did so. Some of us care about facts, and the whole picture. Others clearly are so wedded to their dogma that they are unable to.

I have used Blair's words, not his life history or motivations, in order to illustrate a point. There never will be equality among men, in Medicine or anything else, unless all men are kept at the same level and independence is discouraged...and there'll always be a ruling elite as most people would rather follow than lead.

Questioning the wisdom of Socialized medicine is not a diatribe, it's an opinion. You may be satisfied with your lot as it's all you know, but there are others such as myself who are not willing to leave our health and destiny in the hands of feckless politicians and faceless bureaucrats.

Living in a Socialist/Welfare state may be comforting, but it's another form of indentured servitude, as many in Europe and the UK are beginning to discover. The remaining capitalist geese have stopped laying golden eggs and those dependent upon them are starting to feel the pinch.

 

[cloudy]

I'm not bashing any of you reasonable people here, but I don't know why you continue to engage amicus and his circle-jerk contingent.

They won't change their minds, they aren't all that intelligent, and facts backed up by citations just confuse them. After all, their god of choice, Fux News has already told them all exactly what the truthiness of the situation is.

 

[djserani]

I'm not bashing any of you reasonable people here, but I don't know why you continue to engage amicus and his circle-jerk contingent.

They won't change their minds, they aren't all that intelligent, and facts backed up by citations just confuse them. After all, their god of choice, Fux News has already told them all exactly what the truthiness of the situation is.

I've officially spent too much time ofn facebook. I keep looking for the "Like" button on some of these replies.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Worth 2,000 Words

Let us also remember: That we already pay for universal health care, whether we like it or not. For every uninsured person who is treated in a hospital emergency room -- and crisis care is the very most expensive type of medical care -- we pick up the bill, either in the increased fees the hospitals charge to compensate for these services, or higher taxes to support public hospitals, or increases in our health insurance premiums.

The cheaper alternative to crisis care is preventative visits to a doctor, exactly the kind of thing the current US system discourages or makes impossible for the uninsured. And so they get sicker, and much more likely to require crisis care.

So our current system guarantees that medical costs will increase, and cost all of us more and more income, either in medical fees, or taxes, or insurance premiums. If saving money is the goal, the US's current system is the most counterproductive, as is illustrated in the following graphics:


http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/healthscatter21.png

Source

http://blogs.ngm.com/.a/6a00e0098226918833012876674340970c-800wi

Source: "Graphing the Costs of Healthcare", Peltier Tech Blog

 

[Seduc1ove]

Just curious, but does anyone know how they process these numbers? For example, I recently had an MRI which cost several thousand dollars. Would the U.K. count each MRI as an expense or just the initial price of purchasing the machine?

 

[oggbashan]

Just curious, but does anyone know how they process these numbers? For example, I recently had an MRI which cost several thousand dollars. Would the U.K. count each MRI as an expense or just the initial price of purchasing the machine?

It depends how you were referred for an MRI scan.

If under the NHS, there would be no cost to you, but the cost to the NHS would be the staff time, the proportionate capital cost of the machine either by purchase or rental from the manufacturers, plus administration costs, and last and least the power used during the scan. Since the NHS MRI machine would be used frequently, the cost per scan would be much lower.

If you arranged for the MRI scan to be done privately, either your insurance company would pay - if they had accepted the need, or you would pay cash/credit card.

Og

PS. I just did a quick search. A basic MRI scan, privately arranged, could cost as little as £281 (about 450 US dollars). The cost to the NHS would probably be about 60% of that figure.

 

[amicus]

George Orwell, real name Eric Blair, author of '1984', was a socialist all his life. Not a good idea to use him in defence of 'free market' thinking. Like all socialists, he knew the 'free market' is a figment of the imaginations of a few on the more extreme righteous right. It has never existed and never will.

He argued for, wrote for (he was a journalist on a campaigning leftwing weekly), and voted for, the creation of the National Health Service. Which incidentally, is a UK and not an English institution. (Do you know the difference between England and the UK?)

But we all know that logic and knowledge are not your strong points. I'm glad you spend to much time and effort ranting here. It keeps you out of harm's way, puir laddie.

PS. Don't bother asking me to substantiate what I said about Orwell. Just read his books and his biographies, as I have. It took a while.[/QUOTE]

~~~

Scotsman...that would be the lads that set the Lockerbie Terrorist free, eh?

You mistakenly imply import of Orwell's political implications, I could care less. However, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Orwell and....

(I had to search as the Huxley brothers slipped my mind, I was thinking of Aldous Huxley...)

Eerewhom, Samuel Butler

Aldous Huxley

The big names in 1930s science fiction and fantasy novels included:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, Ray Cummings, L. Spague de Camp,
Edmund Hamilton, Robert E. Howard, L. Ron Hubbard, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, Captain S. P. Meek, Abraham Merritt, P. Schuyler Miller,
Clifford Simak, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Thorne Smith, Olaf Stapledon, John Taine, Charles Tanner, A. E. Van Vogt, Jack Williamson, H. G. Wells, and Philip Gordon Wylie.

A little serendipity here as my intent was to illustrate how many European authors, science fiction and otherwise, created dystopic novels to promote their socialist views and anti industrial revolution woes.

Shake that bunch above and a dozen socialists would fall out of the tree, so what?

More serendipity with which I refute dr mabeuse's insistence that GOVERNMENT, was and is responsible for nurturing science and new innovations; browse through the list and point out government sponsored research and discovery:

Some inventions and innovations of the 1930s that shaped the culture:

1930: Planet discovered: Pluto, by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory
1930: Photoflash bulb
1930: Freon invented by Midgley et al.
1930: Artificial fabric polymerized from acetylene (J. Walter Reppe, Germany)
1930: High-octane gasoline invented by Ipatief (Russia)
1931: Cyclotron invented (Ernest O. Lawrence, USA)
1931: Neoprene (synthetic rubber) developed by Julius A. Nieuwland
1931: Synthetic resin, invented by Hill (England)
1931: Electronic microscope, Lroll & Ruska (Germany)
1932: Vitamin D discovered
1933: Electronic television invented by Philo Farnsworth (USA)
1933: Pure Vitamin C synthesized by Tadeusz Reichstein
1934: Launderette, invented by Cantrell (USA)
1935: Aircraft-detecting radar, by Robert Watson Watt
1935: First sulfa drug (Prontosil) for streptococcal infections (G. Domagk, Germany)
1936: Artificial Heart invented by Dr. Alexis Carrel
1937: Nylon patented for DuPont by Wallace H. Carothers
1937: First jet engine, built by Frank Whittle
1938: Fiberglass invented at Owens-Corning
1938: Teflon invented at Du Pont
1938: Vitamin E identified
1938: Fluorescent lamp, at General Electric
1939: First nylon stockings
1939: Polyethylene invented
1939: First helicopter, built by Igor Sikorsky (Russian-American)
1939: FM (Frequency Modulation) radio invented by Edwin H. Armstrong
1940: First USA helicopter flight, Vought-Sikorsky Corporation
1940: Penicillin perfected by Howard Florey as useful antibiotic
1940: Cavity Magnetron developed (key to Radar)
1940: First transuranic element (Neptunium) discovered (Philip Abelson & Edwin McMillan)
1940: First electron microscope, RCA

~~~

Now, Scotsman, I don't are if you are a believer in Socialism, just as I don't care about the billion Catholics or the Billion Muslims or Hindi, they, as you, are all 'believers' and belong behind a pulpit somewhere.

Like all socialists, he knew the 'free market' is a figment of the imaginations of a few on the more extreme righteous right. It has never existed and never will.

How deliciously silly you are. When the first man exchanged a chunk of mammoth flesh for a sack full of apples, so began the free market. Your feminine dreamworld of lion laying with lamb and total equality for all is the abstraction that has never existed and never will.

Go back to your prayer beads.

Amicus

 

[amicus]

Here is a website which analyses comparative health costs, sourced from the OECD:

http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/universal.htm

On it you will see that health expenditures per capita, and health expenditures as a % of gdp, are higher in the United States - much higher - than in any other developed country.

Patrick

~~~

I shall take your post as tacit agreement that no one has provided any facts in their defense of the NHS.

That America spends more on the invidual health care than anyone else in the world should come as no surprise to you; we, and our somewhat diluted free market system, have the best of everything.

I know that just really pisses you off, but if you would drop the unending burden of socialism and paying all those fatcat bureaucrats, you might have an economic system that could compete with ours.



amicus

 

[amicus]

Right. Because too many people insist that their needs are more important than anyone else's and that they deserve more. Not equal, more.

The underlying problem with ANY human-run system is that it's run by humans. While there are people out there who regularly put others before themselves, the default is greed. Pure and simple.

And I know who is the worst at it. WHich is why I don't vote for them (*coughrepugnicanscough*)[/QUOTE]

~~~

Hello djserani, and welcome...I wonder if you realize that you have bought into the Fundamentalist Christian Altruistic creation theory wherein all men are born evil and must be saved?

It is a thorny (sic) problem to postulate that every human must bow to a god and be reborn with forgiveness before he becomes a godlike person.

"put others before themselves..." you said and I presume you did so in jest; I can just see you feeding a stranger while your family starves and gloating outloud how virtuous you are.

Did anyone ever tell you that Christian and Socialist theology are one and the same and that both are sick, sick, psychological anomalies?

Amicus

 

[Seduc1ove]

It depends how you were referred for an MRI scan.

If under the NHS, there would be no cost to you, but the cost to the NHS would be the staff time, the proportionate capital cost of the machine either by purchase or rental from the manufacturers, plus administration costs, and last and least the power used during the scan. Since the NHS MRI machine would be used frequently, the cost per scan would be much lower.

If you arranged for the MRI scan to be done privately, either your insurance company would pay - if they had accepted the need, or you would pay cash/credit card.

Og

PS. I just did a quick search. A basic MRI scan, privately arranged, could cost as little as £281 (about 450 US dollars). The cost to the NHS would probably be about 60% of that figure.

That is crazy. The one I had was 2000 and with contrast I think it is going to be closer to 9000. Your system is so much cheaper.

 

[Handley_Page]

Great Heavens, Ami, you do like to drift occasionally, don't you.

1] 1940 Magnetron: Randall & Boot, Birmingham Uni.

2] what the 'ell has the Lockerbie bomber to do with this discussion ?

3] " We, and our somewhat diluted free market system, have the best of everything."

This is a bit of nonsense, mate. Surely it should be :

"That and individual American spends more on health care than anyone else in the world should come as no surprise to you; "

[ No it does not come as a surprise; your nation has not quite woken up to smell the coffee yet. Wait 'till you've been a Nation for a couple of thousand years. ]

we, and our somewhat diluted free market system, have the best of everything. Not convinced, mate. Sorry.

I know that just really pisses you off, but if you would drop the unending burden of socialism and paying all those fatcat bureaucrats, you might have an economic system that could compete with ours."

Yes, it is reasonable to drop a few layers of so-called "management" in the NHS, something which several have tried to achieve in the past.
But before casting the stone, consider the fat-cat bureaucrats currently screwing up your medical Insurance system.

 

[amicus]

But all this name-calling and argument from dead theory seems beside the point. I am a socialist at heart and I tell you - the idea of socialism is dead in the public world. Why are you still fighting it? Don Quixotes amid windmills? The world has moved on and completely different challenges about the ways we organise to provide food, energy and material things for ourselves are much more important.

Patrick

~~~

What ever moral system you cling to most likely does not include the concepts of good and evil, so I doubt you will comprehend my reply, but...

Man is required always to combat evil wherever he finds it to protect that which is good.

Socialism is evil and I will tell you why.

Any collective endeavor where force and coercion is a tool, acts to destroy that uniquely individual character that each human being is born with.

The purpose and function of parents, and later, society, should be to nurture that individuality and protect it from being forced to conform to whatever command society is trendy at the time, be it socialism, communism, state socialism, theological dictatorship or just the run of the mill thugs dictatorship.

To claim that you are a destroyer of the individual at heart, is a sad confession and indicates a truly troubled personality.

Get help.



Amicus



__________________

 

[amicus]

TE999 - questioning the cost of commercially provided medicine as a comparison with "socialised" medicine is also an opinion.

We in the UK couldn't afford the US system for two reasons:

1. It costs far too much.

2. It is inefficient because it excludes so many people.

Your health and destiny are in the hands of faceless insurance executives.

We at least can challenge the decisions of our health service through our elected representatives and if necessary, the media. Who can effectively challenge an insurance company's decision to refuse treatment, to deny cover, or to raise an individual's premium to an unaffordable level?

Og

~~~

Ah, dear Oggbashan, your continued defense of your Nationalized Health care is admirable, if somewhat foolish.

Being so far away, you may not hear the clamour in the courts as lawyers by the hundreds challenge payment or non payment of claims by insurance companies. We are a nation of laws based on a constitution, not the whims of an every changing parliament.

I offer you, and all, two analogies concerning individual versus collective values and their sources.

First a pop reference to "The Search for Spock", wherein, towards the end, the statement is made: "Yes, the needs of the individual outweigh the needs of the many..." I paraphrase from memory, but I think it is accurate.

Ah, I had to look it up, it was Kirk, not Spock: "Kirk: Because the needs of the one... outweigh the needs of the many."

But, I suspect you will look down your nose at that reference; that being so, consider Victor Hugo and his novel, Les Miserables, from just over the channel in a town near Paris, France.

Now, at 1900 pages in French, there are many, many moral issues presented, but I choose to refer to just one.

A young man stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving family member, was apprehended and put in prison.

The moral issue is, 'do the needs of some outweigh the rights of others...?'

Is it all right, moral, to steal, to feed a starving person?

The entire issue of national health care rests upon the assumption that the needs of the many outweigh the rights of the few.

You indignantly refute my assertion that nationalization of any industry requires the use of force, coercion and intimidation...and, of course imposed, mandatory taxation to support the program.

You, and others, can argue day and night about the effectiveness in delivering healthcare to all the people, but I hear only the 'final solution', the cost effective means to solve a problem without considering the moral issues involved.

Nor do I care when you say it was voted in by the public in 1948; a people voting themselves into slavery does not excuse them from the brutality of a command society.

There is a fundamental moral premise that you always avoid dealing with; that of the right of the many to impose their will on the few.

Hugo spent 1900 pages addressing that basic moral question and yet you will not even address it.

Why?

Amicus

 

[Seduc1ove]

A man walks into a doctors office one day, completely naked, and covered in saran wrap. He goes to the doctor, and the doctor does some tests, and hours later, he tells the man, "Well, I can clearly see your nuts."

 

[Scotsman69]

Well, oxymoron... (otherwise spelled A.M.I.C.U.S)

(yup, scramble for your Websters, numpty)

Since you brought Lockerbie into a discussion about how healthcare is best delivered, let me tell you something. My only regret about his release is that it means there will never be a retrial. Many well-informed people don't believe he was involved in the bombing.

Many folk who have studied the issue better than I believe that Lockerbie was Iranian revenge, with Syrian complicity, for the unprovoked and completely illegal US gunning down of a civilian Iranian Airbus over the gulf, with the loss of many innocent lives, some time earlier.

They believe he was framed because it suited US and UK foreign policy interests at the time. Maybe if there ever could be a retrial, given that Iranians are once again the baddies, we might finally know the truth.

Oops, sorry, I know that sacrosant US foreign policy, at every stage based on the holy words of the Founding Fathers, could NEVER be wrong and could NEVER be involved in framing innocent parties. Or for that matter blowing a civilian airliner out of the skies. OOPS. My mistake, creeping humbly into the corner to avoid Oxymoron's justified wrath...

I abhor the US action as much as I abhor (reach for your Webster's again...) Lockerbie.

You brought this red herring into the thread Oxymoron, not I.

I suggest you lay off the drink when you're posting. It would do us all a great favour.

Perhaps we could return to healthcare...

George Orwell, real name Eric Blair, author of '1984', was a socialist all his life. Not a good idea to use him in defence of 'free market' thinking. Like all socialists, he knew the 'free market' is a figment of the imaginations of a few on the more extreme righteous right. It has never existed and never will.

He argued for, wrote for (he was a journalist on a campaigning leftwing weekly), and voted for, the creation of the National Health Service. Which incidentally, is a UK and not an English institution. (Do you know the difference between England and the UK?)

But we all know that logic and knowledge are not your strong points. I'm glad you spend to much time and effort ranting here. It keeps you out of harm's way, puir laddie.

PS. Don't bother asking me to substantiate what I said about Orwell. Just read his books and his biographies, as I have. It took a while.[/QUOTE]

~~~

Scotsman...that would be the lads that set the Lockerbie Terrorist free, eh?

You mistakenly imply import of Orwell's political implications, I could care less. However, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Orwell and....

(I had to search as the Huxley brothers slipped my mind, I was thinking of Aldous Huxley...)

Eerewhom, Samuel Butler

Aldous Huxley




A little serendipity here as my intent was to illustrate how many European authors, science fiction and otherwise, created dystopic novels to promote their socialist views and anti industrial revolution woes.

Shake that bunch above and a dozen socialists would fall out of the tree, so what?

More serendipity with which I refute dr mabeuse's insistence that GOVERNMENT, was and is responsible for nurturing science and new innovations; browse through the list and point out government sponsored research and discovery:



~~~

Now, Scotsman, I don't are if you are a believer in Socialism, just as I don't care about the billion Catholics or the Billion Muslims or Hindi, they, as you, are all 'believers' and belong behind a pulpit somewhere.



How deliciously silly you are. When the first man exchanged a chunk of mammoth flesh for a sack full of apples, so began the free market. Your feminine dreamworld of lion laying with lamb and total equality for all is the abstraction that has never existed and never will.

Go back to your prayer beads.

Amicus

 

[TE999]

(yup, scramble for your Websters, numpty)

Since you brought Lockerbie into a discussion about how healthcare is best delivered, let me tell you something. My only regret about his release is that it means there will never be a retrial. Many well-informed people don't believe he was involved in the bombing.

Many folk who have studied the issue better than I believe that Lockerbie was Iranian revenge, with Syrian complicity, for the unprovoked and completely illegal US gunning down of a civilian Iranian Airbus over the gulf, with the loss of many innocent lives, some time earlier.

They believe he was framed because it suited US and UK foreign policy interests at the time. Maybe if there ever could be a retrial, given that Iranians are once again the baddies, we might finally know the truth.

Oops, sorry, I know that sacrosant US foreign policy, at every stage based on the holy words of the Founding Fathers, could NEVER be wrong and could NEVER be involved in framing innocent parties. Or for that matter blowing a civilian airliner out of the skies. OOPS. My mistake, creeping humbly into the corner to avoid Oxymoron's justified wrath...

I abhor the US action as much as I abhor (reach for your Webster's again...) Lockerbie.






Oh brother! First you defend a Socialist Medical System, now a terrorist murderer? What a joke. Of course it's the fashion among Eurotrash like yourself to blame the US for everything. A lot of US soldiers died saving your sorry asses from Nazi's and Communists so you could spout your lies and distortions, so have at it. You're pathetic.

 

[Loring2]

Huh ...

These thread remind me of why I wish I could move to the UK...

What's stopping you?

 

[djserani]

What's stopping you?

Money.

Children (I have custody arrangements with someone here over my children).

Money.

I don't have a job and, thus, no reason for them to allow me to stay.

Money.

Oh, and, um, money.

 

[amicus]

Although money is the root of all good; one should not let ones' principles be guided by money or the lack of it....



ur amicumablessness....

 

[Guest]

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