Posted on 01/26/2023 12:19:36 PM PST by absalom01
Rishi Sunak, the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, refuses to answer a simple question. He was asked three times whether he received private medical care or relied upon the National Health Service, the British version of “single-payer” government-run national health insurance.
Sunak dismissed the question as “not really relevant.” But it is.
The prime minister is the head of the British government and is ultimately responsible for the National Health Service, the government agency that’s supposed to provide “free” universal coverage and care for all of Britain’s citizens.
It does no such thing.
According to the BBC, there are 7.2 million British citizens awaiting medical care, or almost 11% of the entire British population. And Sky News reports that more than 400,000 people in England have been awaiting hospital treatment for more than a year.
Right now, the most salient problem is emergency care. According to The Telegraph, December data show that people suffering a heart attack face an average wait of 90 minutes for an ambulance, with some waiting up to two and a half hours. For emergency care, The Telegraph further reports, 55,000 people were forced to wait on hospital gurneys for “at least” 12 hours following emergency department decisions to admit them.
Of course, patients suffering from a stroke or a heart attack are always in a race against time, as medical delays can result in permanent disability or death.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The US healthcare system is already in a slow death spiral. Staffing and supply chain issues are compounding the reimbursement and regulatory strangulation by the government.
Yeah! We know how to do it right. Now eat your bugs.
Meat Head Reiner loves it. Oh, he stated that Cuba had the best healthcare.
Every critic of the US health crae system, from Rand Paul followers to Bernie Bros has part of the problem right.
This is not principally and economic or a political problem - although it has those elements.
It’s a deep cultural problem with a spiritual dimension, and an inability to punish the massive corruption.
Same as the AHA. Thank God for President Trump figuring out a way to sidestep the AHA a little bit.
I tried to go on one of the sites to check rates. Sent right to Obamacare plans.
They did have those short term ones that he authorized but the prices have gone up drastically from years ago.
Nothing but thieves.
The arguments for socialized medicine always seem to exclude the elites, and are a master class in how to lie with statistics.
They are just like the gun controllers that way. Well, to be fair, they’re mostly the same people, so having the same template isn’t really that surprising.
Before I retired , and just couldn’t do bedside care anymore, I went into utilization review. The most stupid job ever. The hospital was paying a whole department of twenty near retirement nurses ( who then make top dollar) to review charts to determine if we should bill them as inpatient or outpatient. We also had a physician company who got paid for each chart we sent to them if it was a Medicare plan that exceeded three days. Not to mention the 6 people who were hired to just fax reports to the insurance companies. There was also another department in our hospital, also staffed by RNs, who reviewed charts to see if key words that physicians could use in their dictations could create more revenue. Thats not counting all the bloated administration layers just to maximize billing or to comply with government mandates.
As a result, the people actually delivering the care gets short staffed, creating burnout , and the result is them quitting working in healthcare.
If the billing system does not get simplified, and mandates decrease significantly, healthcare in the US is going to be in a real crisis state within the next five years. Care will be rationed, even if you have good insurance.
NHS: I see you are 65 yrs old, so. . . .no medical care for you because we have to make room for the “young” that drink to excess and do drugs. You go home and die.
They just haven’t raised taxes high enough or put more bureaucrats on the payroll.
Of course the Muslim invaders go to the head of the line.
It was indeed a silly question. Rich people routinely seek private medical service.
Well, that was the point of the question, because it’s assumed that Sunak would not want to have his own medical care determined by the availability of the National Health. But in the UK, that’s a political hot potato always, and even more in the current context with the unions looking for pay raises, hours consessions etc. as they system crumbles.
So the reason the regime reporter asked the question was to paint the Tories as heartless and detached from the common man in their relative reluctance to throw even more money at the NHS. Which is why Sunak deflected the question.
But it seemed an opportune time to point out that these sorts of “single payer” systems are always expensive, and always on the verge of collapse. Resisting these things remains important, imho.
If you keep them waiting long enough you don’t have to treat them anymore.
A lot of things should have been a wakeup call to the left.
But they were not.
The “Green Wet Dream” should be a wakeup call to all Americans. But they continue believing in unicorns and fluffy white bunnies delivering their “clean” power. Some day they’ll wake up when the lights are on six hours a day and, even if more power were available, nobody could afford it.
Small world. I worked in just about every business aspect of healthcare for 34 years. Access to billing. HIM and MM to IT. Compliance to utilization review. Reimbursement to cost reporting. Aside from helping to keep the doors open, my work never made a positive contribution to patient care.
Google: Liverpool Care Pathway, daily mail
You will see many stories about how the British NHS was murdering 125,000 people a year by denying them healthcare. Either giving no medicine or food or water if they made it to the hospital till they died or leaving them in the ambulance in the parking lot till then died or not answering the call when made because someone at NHS deemed them too costly to save and put them on a death list. Below shows that also made bonus money doing so.
The NHS renamed the Liverpool Care Pathway when caught to some other name but the killings continue.
Example story:
Hospitals bribed to put patients on pathway to death: Cash incentive for NHS trusts that meet targets on Liverpool Care Pathway
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223286/Hospitals-bribed-patients-pathway-death-Cash-incentive-NHS-trusts-meet-targets-Liverpool-Care-Pathway.html
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