Yes, the British right wing media likes to bash the NHS to score political points. Even they don’t really want to get rid of it, though. Any party that attempted to close down the NHS and substitute an American style privatized heath care system in Britain would certainly lose control of Parliament in a heartbeat.
If they want to take care of the million or two at most that actually can’t find better and cheaper plans on the private market and on the exchanges all that needs to be done is pass a one year tax credit for those people to break even.
Of course there’d be documentation required etc and then we’d really find out how many of all the anecdotal stories about losing insurance is true.
We’d need Republicans in the House to go along - that is if they are truly interested in helping those people.
That is the obstacle that remains to be seen.
Are Republicans interested in helping or keep on hurting in order to posture themselves politically on their chief fundraising cash machine - The ACA.
England? NHS? When did we start talking about England? So, when you say “the government” you are talking about England? Seriously, dude! Da fuk?
And that is why you lose accountability. The bureaucrats will never be fired, the activists face no risk that their project will be rejected, the politicians don’t directly run it, and “America is worse!” can always be used as a distraction. Although pointing out that “Germany is better!” would probably be more helpful.
NHS is the worst example, but even in well functioning systems, when the government says “no”, you might as well start measuring for the coffin. When a private company says “no”, there are options, although none of them easy. The government’s word is usually final.
You talk about “when the government denies treatment” and you get called on it, you try to tell me you were talking about England.
Please. That’s embarrassing. Don’t do that.
England is the most egregrious case. It is also the model that single-payer advocates most love.
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NHS is not single-payer, it’s single provider.
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You know why it’s so easy to find stories of people being denied treatment on the NHS? Because it’s so rare. How many similar stories would you get in the US? You could practically have a running ticker of people being denied treatment.
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The UK still has a private healthcare system (and private health insurance), and if for whatever reason the UK denies you treatment you still have the option to go private. So no coffins, unless of course you can’t afford private healthcare. Of course, in the US system you’d go straight to step 2.
Do you ever tire of talking about things you know nothing about?
Latvia. He was talking about Latvia.
Two things. First, the article is repeating a claim made by a Andy Burham, a representative of the opposition party. It does not make the claim itself, and doesn’t present any evidence for the claim. Second, this denial of care is (according to the Labour rep.) directly a result of the current Conservative government slashing government programs. David Cameron is, as I understand things, from the party in the UK that is, in general, less keen on things like socialized health care. So this was not a problem before the Conservatives came into power, and is a problem now, because of how Conservatives, who don’t like the NHS, have changed the NHS to be less functional. At least, that’s according to the Labour party - and since you’re willing to take their unsourced assertion about people not getting medical treatment at face value, I’m certain that you’ll take their assertions about the Cameron government’s policies with an equal amount good faith.
Well, as the article you posted noted, these were reforms instituted by the Tory government, in response to complaints about long wait times in the NHS. Said reforms being, as I understand it, not particularly popular with the UK electorate.
So while I’m not aware of any party falling out of favor in the UK because people dislike the NHS, we may shortly see a party fall out of favor because people like the NHS so much.
It’s also worth mentioning that those 50,000 people who will, allegedly, not be treated for their health problems? They also wouldn’t be treated in the US. Even if you think the NHS isn’t covering enough, it’s still covering vastly more than the US does, which makes the prospect of adopting a similar program in the US more desirable, not less. And I get the impression from your posts that it’s the opposite argument you’re trying to make.
Lastly, on a hunch I looked around to see if I could find mention of this story from the Guardian or the BBC. I admit, I could not find coverage of this year-old speech, from a Labour politician, on the BBC or the Guardian. I did find no end of articles about Andy Burham blasting the Cameron government’s handling of the NHS in general. Also, an article, from the Guardian, accusing the BBC of not sufficiently covering the protests against Cameron’s cuts. Which, from other articles I found, appeared to be fairly extensive. But I didn’t find any other coverage of the specific claim that 50,000 people were being denied care, under the NHS, thanks to cuts made by David Cameron.
Clearly, this lack of coverage in the mainstream press of this particular instance of a Labour politician excoriating a Tory politician over his bungling of the NHS is part of some sort of a left wing plot in the British media.
Oh, that England! The one over there by France!
Single payer and single provider.
It’s not that rare. It’s pretty routine according to the cite. And for exactly the same reasons private insurance companies deny treatment: the bottom line.
Only if you don’t have insurance or your claim is denied. The systems are similar, the only difference is the main insurer. The incentives are all the same and the results are pretty close. Among our insured population, I’d bet anything that we are MILES ahead of them. The good thing about ACA is that it’ll expose the deficiencies of single-payer systems, which will no longer be able to claim they are better than the American system.
Well, someone here doesn’t seem to tire of it. You made a ridiculous claim, that NHS denial of treatment is rare, something which you cannot prove.
Here’s the facts:
The US has 96 preventable deaths per 100,000 people. The UK, 83. The entire discrepancy can be explained by our uninsured population, which means that at minimum, the US insured are no more likely to be denied care and die than NHS patients. So the real question we should be asking is why it creates outrage here, but not there?
Yet, remarkably, the people of the UK seem to have almost universally warm regard for NHS, and would consider anyone proposing its abolition to be barking mad. Why d’ya s’pose that could be, hmm?
That’s ridiculous. Transferring a $10000 from an individual to the other paients (with or without insurance) did not reduce the $10000 at all. Costs weren’t redused just redistributed and in fact increased prices for all customers except one.
Am I reading that chart right? It looks like the cost containment
- Reduces insurance admin costs. No guaranty that savings is passed on to consumer.
2,3) Medicare and medicaid restructuring. I don’t know how that helps a non-medicare/medicaid covered person even indirectly. - Gives biologic drug manufacturers 12 years of exclusivity before generics can be produced. Isn’t that similar to what we have now?
- An improvement to the way to detect and handle fraud. I’m not sure how much fraud the new system will eliminate and the assumption is saving passed through to customers.
The tort reform should help indirectly and transparency as well, but the issue has always been that care providers make up their prices. What if their acual costs had to be transparent as in MRI machine cost+maintainence vs number of uses so I have a baseline when they charge me $1200 to look at my knee. Mrs Cad was charged $3000 for a sleep study as in hook you up to a machine while someone watches you sleep. What was the hospital’s real cost for machine and lab monkey?
The Kaiser list is a nice list of the measures, but the other links more helpfully connect them to how they will cut costs.
I think one of the big aspects you’re missing is how changes to Medicare affect overall healthcare costs. Because they are the biggest and most important player in the market, when they say they will pay more for hospitals with fewer readmissions, or won’t pay for MRIs that the research suggests don’t help with diagnosis (to offer two of dozens of example), that causes hospitals to do things differently for all patients.
And again, for an overall view of these measures, see my prior post with the bolded headings.
I can understand the dilemma of the hospitals, the ethical and moral choices are ugly. They cannot turn away sick people from their emergency rooms, and it must tear at their hearts when they see a condition that has been allowed to advance to urgent levels when it could have been treated easily sooner.
So they see insured patients as “free money”, they can overcharge and overtest. That isn’t right, it isn’t kosher, but it saves lives. They are forced to choose between “do no harm” and do a little harm to a nameless and faceless entity, and save lives, or, at least, prevent needless suffering. A life of suffering isn’t a life.
I have no idea how many times this is not the case, how many times these things are done for no better purpose but to pad the profit margin for investors and stockholders. In my opinion, such people should be horsewhipped through the streets, but I am advised there are some legal complications to that approach. More’s the pity.
This is true of all health care systems in the world, even ours. People like what they have and don’t want to risk change. Thus the President’s promise.
I’ll bet there are about 45 million people in America who would disagree with that.
The other 250 million wanted to keep what was theirs. Of course, advocates of ACA say the new system will be better. Likewise, if Britain went to multi-payer, they’d be better. But people fear change, even though like the US, they see that it works all over the world.