Doctors admit: NHS treatments must be rationed (UK Universal Healthcare Isn't Universal)

The Guardian ^ | 05/06/07 | Denis Campbell

[Reaganesque]

British doctors will take the historic step of admitting for the first time that many health treatments will be rationed in the future because the NHS cannot cope with spiralling demand from patients. In a major report that will embarrass the government, the British Medical Association will say fertility treatment, plastic surgery and operations for varicose veins and minor childhood ailments, such as glue ear, are among a long list of procedures in jeopardy.

James Johnson, the BMA chairman, will warn that patients face a bleak future because they will increasingly be denied treatments. He will urge the NHS to be much more explicit about what it can realistically afford to do and ask political leaders to engage in an open, honest debate about rationing.

...

Senior BMA sources say their report recognises the reality that despite record investment in the NHS, 'postcode lotteries' are rife. Primary care trusts, the local NHS organisations that commission and pay for care from hospitals on behalf of patients, are increasingly rejecting requests to pay for procedures or drugs because they are not perceived to be the best use of funds...

[DugwayDuke]

“Yea, I was on Obama’s website yesterday, checking out his policies, and under healthcare, it says “ The plan will cover all essential medical services”. The word ‘essential’ jumped out at me. Who decides?”

Doesn’t really matter. Socialized medicine works this way. First, you develop a budget for healthcare. This budget includes all the essential services. The budget allocates funds for each essential service. The budget is not a projection of how many services of that type is required, it is based upon what the government can afford to pay. When you need a service, it will be provided if funds are available. If no funds, then no service and you have to wait on new funds.

Insurance works this way. You have a contract with the carrier to provide a service. The availability of funds doesn’t matter, the carrier must provide the service if the service is determined to be necessary by your physician.

Too many people think that universal health care will be like insurance only paid by the government and forget that the government will only pay for the services in it’s health care budget.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Its what they did for a kid in my high school class who had ears that stuck out from his head.

[Reaganesque]

Another example of how socialized medicine works is the way Princess Diana received treatment after her crash. French paramedics were on the scene fairly quickly but, because of socialized medicine, they had to decide which hospital to take her to for care. Under the French system, different hospitals are mandated to specialize in certain areas so the paramedics couldn’t just take her to the nearest hospital. They had to take her to “the right one.” So, while bureaucrats dithered, Diana lay at the scene of the crash, bleeding to death.

It is well known in the medical community that a trauma patient should be gotten to a care facility as fast as possible, preferably in the first 20-30 minutes after the victim’s wounds were received. It took French paramedics more than 90 minutes to get her the care she needed. Who knows if they could have saved her at all, but the fact remains, her chances for survival would have been significantly greater had the French been able to just take her to the nearest hospital and get her into surgery within the first 30 minutes like paramedics here in the US can and do.

Socialized medicine kills. That’s all there is to it.

[MrB]

I asked someone in favor of universal healthcare if they thought that the people who implemented all the failing systems in other countries were stupid or incompetent.

The idea that it will work here where it didn’t work somewhere else implies that we’ll do it smarter, for some reason.

I actually got an admission that the gov’t probably wasn’t the best entity to run a universal healthcare system.

[DugwayDuke]

Or, more personally.

My father in law had a massive heart attack, the kind you would have been in bypass surgery within hours. In Germany, he waited six months for the surgery.

Also in Germany. My mother in law was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her treatment was very good and quickly executed. Breast cancer has a tendency to spread to the bones and there are drugs to offset that tendency (as we later learned). Problem was her doctor had exceeded his budget for prescriptions and did not prescribe the appropriate medications to prevent the spread. Three years later she died from bone cancer.