Posted on 07/26/2010 9:23:37 AM PDT by lbryce
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.
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.
Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Is this article actually saying that England wants to dismantle its socialized health care system, that it has failed?
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
Wasn't it precisely because it would save untold billions,reduce administrative cost that England had gone with the socialized medical approach in the first place? So, is it that they now want to reverse it in achieving savings, eduction in administrative costs, that socialized medicine had initially promised failed to deliver?
And what does that say about our own impending adoption of socialized medicine, its ability to save money, provide berter service,as envisioned by the administration?
What am I missing here?
Let’s expose 0bama-care for what it REALLY is.
It’s a POWER GRAB!
They want to CONTROL you, and this is just one of the many ways they intend to do it.
Too bad for them we still have elections and the spirit of independence still beats in the majority of American hearts.
The Old World and the Latin American World are not as familiar with the independent spirit of Liberty. They have had a fleeting taste of it from time to time, but it has always been rapidly crushed.
However, the US has had this spirit for far too long for it to be so easily dispelled. Even most of the liberal busybodies are really libertarian at heart and are having second thoughts about cradle-to-grave, totalitarian collectivism.
If they really believed that’s what 0bama and his merry gang of thieves represented, they would NOT vote for him.
They just didn’t know it or didn’t believe it.
But I think they’re waking up.
This is why NHS managers have been briefing against it, using leaked reports that purport to show it will kill every sick person in the UK. The truth is of course: patient care will improve and NHS managers will lose their grotesquely well paid jobs.
Learn from our example, US! We shot ourselves in the goolies, and you know what, it wasn't a good idea!
For your further reading pleasure...
Libs will refuse to believe that the intellectually and morally superior ruling class would have anything but benevolent intentions.
They will refuse because their own sense of self-worth and “good personhood” is wrapped up in their support of people who want to help others.
Exposing those they support will be viewed as a direct attack on their souls and will be vehemently denied.
Greece's creditors this year said a major step in solving the debt crisis would be privatizing the Greek national health care system.
“Learn from our example, US! We shot ourselves in the goolies, and you know what, it wasn’t a good idea! “
But like abused women who run back to their abusers, they go “but it’ll be different this time, really!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.