Posted on 04/09/2019 4:53:03 PM PDT by MtnClimber
A cautionary tale about centralized medicine:
Thousands of elderly people in Britain are left to go blind because of rationing of eye surgery in the National Health Service (NHS), a report revealed on Saturday (April 6).
The Times newspaper said a survey by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) found tens of thousands of elderly people are left struggling to see because of an NHS cost-cutting drive that relies on them dying before they can qualify for cataract surgery.
The survey has found that the NHS has ignored instructions to end cataract treatment rationing in defiance of official guidance two years ago. The RCO said its survey has found 62 percent of eye units retain policies that require people’s vision to have deteriorated below a certain point before surgery is funded.
With more than 400,000 cataract operations carried out each year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that there was no justification for policies that denied patients cataract removal surgery until they could barely see.
The RCO said that refusal to fund surgery was insulting and called into question the entire system through which the NHS approves treatments.
Ms Helen Lee of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) said: “Cataracts can have a dramatic impact on someone’s ability to lead a full and independent life, potentially stopping them from driving and increasing their chance of serious injury by falling. The NICE guidelines make it clear cataract surgery is highly cost-effective and should not be rationed. It is nonsensical for clinical commissioning groups to deny patients this crucial treatment.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gatesofvienna.net ...
NICE is not nice.
“——— the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that there was no justification for policies that denied patients cataract removal surgery until they could barely see. “
You might want to read that again—NICE are the good guys.
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They are part of the problem too. They don’t want to get rid of the national health system and go to a private system.
if the NHS got rid of the gomers,
things would work better
I'm in this situation with the VA. Driving at night has become pretty difficult because of the starburst effect from oncoming headlights. They told me last year that they can probably do it this year. I hope so because I've heard it makes a big difference.
Not so. NICE is what we would call a Death Panel. It makes the decisions, on a nationwide basis, about which treatments are cost effective for given conditions. The ones that don’t make the cut are BANNED. Not nice.
An old acquaintance moved to England as a expat many years ago. She had glaucoma. She learned early to fly to the states for medical care and does so annually. I am not sure how she pays for her stateside care, perhaps she files for welfare when she is here.
I lived in Britain and worked within the NHS. The pay was low, but the work requirements were lax. I have screamed from the rooftops that people in this country have NO IDEA how Socialized Medicine works. The only way it stays even remotely viable is to ration care. And the cost to the taxpayer is an extra 20% in ‘Fed’ taxes to pay for all that noncare. And there, the government takes what it wants and once a year sends you a postcard to let you know how much you paid in taxes. Oh, one more thing, the NHS doesn’t subsidize Care Homes for the Elderly. And they are twice what the cost is in the USA. Please tell all your friends.....WE DO NOT WANT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE HERE!!
our future......
Or get an accommodating lens which adjusts between near and far like you natural lens did.
Waiting to see (or not see) when I will need the surgery and how available and reliable the accommodating lenses are.
L8r
Had my second eye done about four years ago, accommodating lenses weren’t a possibility - nonetheless the world looks so much brighter and sharper as soon as you start seeing again that you find it hard to believe it ever looked that way to you before...
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