My Facebook response was something to the effect of, “No Canadian should die because they can’t get to the US for the best medical care in the world. And no one from Great Britain should have to wait 6 months for knee surgery because government runs their health system.”
My Headline: “We can get the wait for a hearing aid down from 2 and a half years to JUST 16 weeks!”
From the offical UK parliament record:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo051220/debtext/51220-02.htm
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con): In July 2004, last year’s Health Minister acknowledged, in response to my concerns, that waiting times for fitting digital hearing aids were extending. Yet 17 months on, the waiting time to see a specialist audiologist and get fitted in my region of the south-east has risen from 58 to 81 weeks. At the Royal Sussex county hospital in Brighton, the worst wait is for 130 weeks—two and a half years. At that rate, many of our elderly constituents will have appointments with the undertaker before they have appointments with the audiologist. When is the Minister going to get a grip on this scandal, particularly given that he could be using hundreds of qualified professionals in the private sector who could be brought on board now at no extra cost?
Mr. Byrne: Let me take the example of the constituency of the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire). We know that waiting lists there could be brought down to just 16 weeks by moving the number of sessions at the local trust from 54 to about 71. That is not an earth-shattering exercise, particularly when we know that an extra £75 million is going into the PCT over the next two years. We have brought down the price, we have put more audiologists in place and we have helped PCTs to use their resources more effectively, so the conditions are in place for waiting lists to fall very quickly over the next 12 months.