The State of the NHS Follow

With all this MRSA and C.Difficule, am I the only one who thinks the NHS would be better is nurses were a bit more outspoken - like This ?

Yeah the National Honor Society is pretty much a joke.

You're completely wrong.

I really have no clue where you got that impression from.

Its not that we feel compelled to fight off death's every attack, just that somebody is collecting the social security and medic-aid/insurance money from those geriatric basket cases and making a tidy sum while doing so. As long as they can keep them alive to keep the money rolling in, they'll do so.

Just another free market solution to an age old problem for ya.

I think argueing with Nobby on this subject would be a little foolish, sort of like taking on Smash about top end Maths or Joph on getting a big post count..

Holy Hell, for once Nobby doesn't think I'm a twunt - or maybe I'm just a twunt with good clips ^^ Either way, I'm shocked!

I really have no clue where you got that impression from.

147 Billion (with a B) in Big Pharma PR.

You really couldn't have not known where he got it from?

The common perception in the US is that you have to wait 5 years to have your appendix removed in the UK, and that when it's done, you're operated on by a 16 year old Haitian witchdoctor.

As opposed to a 27 year old Pakistani. It's a big lie, I say!

Who says that systems that are mostly state funded are cheaper? In the UK, the state contribution to healthcare was ~£105 billion for 60 million people in the last year, i.e. about £1750 per person.

Do you have comparable figures for the US healthcare system?

You're comparing apples and orangs; and it is an entirely different type of care. In the united states there are more specialists and if you have money you can get pretty much any care you want immediately. In Canda, UK, etc there are more generalists and there *is* waiting for elective procedures. There is a reason you can buy private insurance in the UK.

My original statement was born of colleagues who have worked in both systems and hence have seen the different expectations in the two countries. In America if you have untreatable stage IV lung cancer and come to the emergency room with a pneumonia and want to be intubated you will be. Is that "saving lives?".

There was a patient recently who had a terrible intestinal infection and became near comatose. He then had a feeding tube installed. He then had dialysis initiated. He was living in a nursing home near comatose and having many of the functions of his body performed by machines. This is one of the reasons care costs so much here.

We spend more per health care dollar on adminstrative costs as there are too many payers. That is another reason it costs more here.

We are more litiginous here; defensive medicine is another reason reason it costs more here.

We do not have centralized bulk discounts with drug suppliers. Canada does have bulk discounts with their more centralized system but this is expressly forbidden to medicare/medicaid. This is another reason it costs more here.

We tend to have more high technology (MRI/CT scanners) per capita and tend to use it more freely; another reason it costs more here.

I believe in socialized care but don't expect to go to a socialized system and have exactly the same care you recieve right now here in the US.

--DK

No, not "saving lives", but honoring their oath and doing no harm. Hell, we don't euthanize folks; we're a long ways off from denying treatment to terminal patients.

And in the face of your other valid examples concerning the inflated cost of care in the US(administrative bloat, litigation, ridiculous pharmaceutical practices), the argument that the cost of what you would consider superfluous treatment is anything but a miniscule contributor is silly, if not offensive.

I find this list interesting. Average life expectancies of the countries of the world.


It is perhaps somewhat a good indicator of the effectiveness of healthcare in a country, because usually when life is extended, the period of mobility and healthiness is extended too.


The list seems to indicate that the UK and Australian model of healthcare do better than the US model, but only by a very marginal amount. What we need is a list per capita of health care costs, because the big difference is that the UK and Australian models do it CHEAPER.

My own hunch on that is that when everyone can go see a doctor or specialist about any nagging little health problem, those problems are much less likely to turn into great big health catastrophes that are, funnily enough, more expensive to treat.

Couldn't disagree more. What I find silly and offensive is people not blinking at spending $25000 to potentially prolong a life for a short degree and don't mind at all that a huge proportion of people in america don't have insurance or access to even basic health.

And it is *not* the same everywhere. Visiting MD's over here marvel at what we do with our end-of-life, or specifically, lack of end-of-life care.

--DK

Well, using your number here, $25,000 is in fact miniscule compared to the other factors you listed, and it's such a small number when discussing the realistic cost of care in the US that it sort of demonstrates a lack of understanding on your part. Death easily costs six figures. Furthermore, who's saying they don't mind at all about our system's failure to provide care? Just saying that the other factors are legitimate, while this contempt for prolonging lives you deem infeasible is a joke.



Thanks but I'll take Nobby's word. Even if it were true that countries with socialized care achieve that result through allowing terminal patients to expire naturally against their wishes, I'd prefer an ethical conformity that provides care to folks who want it.

Damn though, we could probably save a fUckton of dough if we just incinerated kids with leukemia. Could even be an alternative fuel source, come to think of it.