Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Neonivek]

Besides the USA is closer to having legitimate Death Panels then Britain.

[mainiac]

A panel indicates it's done by experts.  We have death ouija boards or death lotteries.

[Frumple]

Part of me thinks a death ouija board may be the better option when compared to a panel comprised to any degree by insurance experts. At least the former involves them having to make some uncomfortable/UST-charged hand touching.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm reminded of that article posted in an American newspaper saying that if Stephen Hawking had to rely on the NHS then he'd be dead a long time ago... then Hawking reminded them that he was British...

He reminded them a bit more strongly than that

An American newspaper subsequently used Prof Hawking as an example of the deficiencies of the NHS. "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless," it claimed.
"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Stephen Hawking said. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

I'd say it was peerless, but quality has taken a decline. My local General Practitioner has always been one of the worst in all of the UK, but when it came to things like surgery or life saving treatment I've never been in safer hands. For "free" no less, "free" because our NHS is funded from taxes and National Insurance - it is better than paying out of pocket for vulnerable and unfortunate persons (cost is spread out across people and across time). Currently the long term hopes for the NHS are in a clusterfuck of slow-building catastrophes that will one day cause ruin if left unchecked:

• Rise in demand of NHS services due to an increasing number of obese or old patients in Britain means that no number of monies in the world will be able to keep the NHS afloat under the weight of so many needlessly incurred or unavoidable illnesses and malaise.
• As a result, funding must increase to keep pace, or services be cut. Money has been saved with efficient managers cutting out the red tape and waste, but this is not a long term solution to the funding woes of the NHS - you can only get so efficient before you need more money.
• There are simultaneously fewer medical students (relative to the increase in demand for health services), and the med students also want increased pay. Funding again
• The story is much the same for nursing, understaffing leads to them being overstretched
• Mental Health is being underprioritised in favour of treating life threatening diseases

Last week, a think-tank said “unpalatable” decisions about rationing lie ahead unless the NHS achieves unprecedented levels of efficiency savings, or receives a funding boost.
The Nuffield Trust said hospitals would have to achieve twice the level of efficiencies achieved in recent years, to have any hope of closing a £22bn funding gap by 2020.
So yeah, things are getting worse, and increasingly it seems like we are going to find a future where a great deal of many people are going to have to die. Until then, the NHS is still imo very good

Obligatory reading from the NHS:
Get serious about obesity or bankrupt the NHS
Just cut down a little on the mash, give yourself more decades of life

Simon Stevens points to the fact that nearly one-in-five secondary school aged children are obese, as are a quarter of adults – up from just 15 per cent twenty years ago. Unchecked, the result will inevitably be a huge rise in avoidable illness and disability, including many cases of type 2 diabetes which Diabetes UK estimate already costs the NHS around £9 billion a year.

It is possible we could just start getting draconian and charging parents who allow their children to become obese with child neglect

[Neonivek]

Man I love Canada but BOY do a lot of things not fall under our health care system.

Diabetes you say? Not covered in Canada. So we aren't going to have the same issues Brits are having.

[Dorsidwarf]

As someone too pissed right now to look it up, has the introduction of management layers everywhere by the Tories helped or harmed nhs efficiency?

Curious becaien Covenanter and LW said opposite positions on it and usually they're pretty Ida logically similar

[Leafsnail]

I think the biggest issue with the US system is that patients are discouraged from getting cheap, preventative medicine due to its cost, and instead end up having a very expensive ER trip later. This is a very inefficient way to do things and means that more money is spent on the health system overall.

Having a financial incentive to over-medicate is also worrying, I don't think medicine is a suitable area for a free market at all.

[Avis-Mergulus]

Russian here. I'm probably not gonna contribute that much, since all I have to go on is personal experience and hearsay, but here goes:

Funded by: taxes

Quality: unpredictable, but generally noticeably worse outside of big cities. The clinics are often underfunded and the doctors demotivated, but they will save your life if you're straight up dying.

Stuff included: all I know is that dentistry is not. I'd like to tell you if they'll help you if you have AIDS or something similarly dangerous and expensive, but I don't know. There are free shots for almost anything and you can go for yearly checkups, which will also screen for cancer and shit. Dermatology, venerology, psychiatry and narcology are also included in your standard coverage, but I wouldn't go for the latter two, honestly.

Other:
1. They've implemented a system that lets you sign up through the net recently. It...kinda works, in my experience.
2. Holy shit there are old-ass, grumpy-ass babushkas everywhere. They will tell you all about their anal warts, and then bitch you out cause you signed up for a specific time, and all they got is a 'live queue' coupon (this means the doctor will see you when they have time. You get those if you don't sign up for a specific time but show up anyway on a day with no free time slots in it).
3. Private paid clinics are also popular, and may be part of your employer's insurance package. It is sometimes said that the government is purposefully sabotaging the public healthcare system in their favor.

This is not at all comprehensive, but I hope it helps.

[Loud Whispers]

As someone too pissed right now to look it up, has the introduction of management layers everywhere by the Tories helped or harmed nhs efficiency?

An efficient mess is still a mess

There wasn't an introduction of management layers so much as a complete reorganization, which while it made things more efficient was poor prioritization, as the problem that needed to be addressed was one of wealth and health management, not "management." Thus it made things more efficient yet allowed the real problems to get even worse, cancelling out the benefits gained from the reorganization and more (you know something's wrong when the more efficient system fails targets). It's a big problem because no party wants to be unpopular, so Labour in 2015 responded with offering their own structural organization, just because it seemed like the "safe alternative" to offer. Basically they want good headlines, not working solutions, because no one wants to be the one who terminates their political career cutting NHS coverage for the benefit of future voters who'll be voting for someone decades from now

Curious becaien Covenanter and LW said opposite positions on it and usually they're pretty Ida logically similar

I think Covenant and I have come to the same conclusion just different scope and focus

*EDIT
Holy shit and why do we pay benefits to let people grow heavier than a black bear

I have a funny anecdote from one of my fams friends, they were a doctor in a clinical trial and one of the participants was morbidly obese. Thing was, he said he didn't know how he gained all that weight. Doc asks him 'how much food do you eat a day?'
Man says
'Doctor, I'm dead scared of food. I only eat two slices of bread a day.'
Doctor asks him:
'Are you lying?'
'No'
Doctor believes him - asks him another question.
'You drink tea or coffee?'
'Yeah, tea.'
'How many sugars?'
'Two.'
How many cups of tea a day?'
'40.'
'That would appear to be the problem'

Education on even basic nutrition, health and biology, the power of marketing and fast food chains, the ease in which a sedentary lifestyle is possible in Western society, once these are all tackled we shouldn't even have an NHS obesity crisis, because we won't have obese Britons (and the ones who are will be the result of injuries or mental illness, which is fair enough to warrant spending).
Oh yeah and the #fatacceptance #fatisbeautiful people need to stand up for health and not promote death

[thvaz]

Brazilian here. We have a universal public health care, it is called SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde - Health Single System ). It isn't free because "there is no such thing as a free lunch" , but it is funded by taxes paid by corporations, workers and (I guess) private health insurance associates.

The quality varies wildly across the country but I think it is hard to find some place where you could call that it is good. Some believe it is a meat grinder, where the poor go to die. I think this is true in big cities where hospitals just can't cope with the demand. In smaller cities the situation may be better thanks to smaller demand but they usually don't have a lot of specialized treatments there, so you may end up in the big cities anyway.

I have a private health insurance plan so I avoid using the public system. I guess it is good that those that can't afford private hospitals have the public system (better than nothing) but I think it could be done way better than it is (government issued health insurance for instance)

[ChairmanPoo]

Quality: unpredictable, but generally noticeably worse outside of big cities.

This is likely true everywhere. The larger the hospital, the more resources it will have at it's disposal. And viceversa.  In small hospitals in rural settings, you can't do jackshit, and have to rely on tertiary hospitals actually deigning to take in your patients.

It's not just a matter of less installations and the like, btw. It's that I have to refer people for treatments that could and should be dealt with locally, yet for some reason they're not avaiable. 

So yeah TL, DR: better have a large hospital as your center of reference.

[SaberToothTiger]

In Poland, the health system is broken. Theoretically, there is mandatory public health insurance called NFZ (Narodowy Fundusz Zdrowia - National Health Fund), and in theory if you are insured, you will get treatment for illnessess and stuff.

The problem is the waiting queue, which in some cases can force you to wait for a few years before getting to see your doctor. Emergencies (maiming or death without medical aid) are done for free, but if you have a bad cut on your arm, but don't deserve to be called an emergency, prepare to wait for a few days or pay up.

Private healthcare is of high quality, but expensive, and not available everywhere.

[Sheb]

We have a system were we can pick up from several non-rpofit assurance providers, most the descendent of self-aid societies aligned with political parties. We don't pay them directly though, they're funded through taxes ppaid by workers and employees. Basic coverage is fairly good, and highly regulated, so they all compete on offering other services above and beyond what's mandatory (like reinbursing sport clubs membership).

[RoseHeart]

bump - thanks for these answers.

[Reelya]

And then I found this

The article is a load of bollocks. The 130000 people is the total who receiving palliative end-of-life care according to a standard called Liverpool Care Pathway. Basically that article is claiming 100% of them were "euthanized". But it includes virtually 100% of people who were in hospitals with a terminal illness. And the thing is, it's a process for caring for them, it's not like they're giving them drugs that are going to cause them to die. Similarly there was a report saying that 250,000 people are killed in the US medical system by medical errors. That one was also questionable, but both would throw their respective systems into doubt, if true.

I found several other links too...

Anyway, I heard some truly terrible things about the UK NHS back in the 90s, so unless it is way better than it was then, I would fight tooth and nail before that came here. When you put the government in charge of health care you get government workers for health care workers, and we all know how efficient and caring the government is don't we?

We need a government (unless you want to live in some kind of libertarian hell-hole), but I don't want mine to be able to say whether I can get care, or what kind I can get.

Sorry, but government people are as caring as corporate people, any day. More so, in fact. And yes, government versions of things are almost always lower cost, in fact, compared to corporate versions.

Have you heard about that time they privatized that government thing, then the price went down? What, you never heard a story like that? Well, that's because privatizing things never actually causes the price to decrease, so there are no "success stories" that the pro-privatization people can cite. So how does privatization work then? Well, they take some subsidized service that has shoe-string level funding and isn't making a profit, then they sell it to a company. That company then raises the price of the core service. The price rise drives customers away, this then allows the company to slash services and close offices. The idea that corporations can provide the same level of service for less cost is therefore a lie. The benefit of privatization is that corporations can provide less service for higher costs, because they're not constrained by the Duty of Care that the government is.

You can still buy other health care options in most countries that have national insurance. But it's a program everyone pays into, so nobody can be denied care by politicians. British people live 3 years longer than Americans as well. So Americans have "more choice" at the expense of living three years shorter and paying three times as much for healthcare. You can do the math. There are horror stories everywhere and those ones are cherry-picked by lobbyists for the American-style system. Go watch a doco about the American system for comparison.

The fundamental problem with for-profit care is that they have to scare you to get insurance, and the only way to do that is people dying in the streets and they can be like "don't want to die horribly? Buy medical insurance now, and don't die horribly later!". But to really sell that, they require the "dying horribly" part to be really happening to someone down the street.