*I say possibly, because in the US costs are high because no individual cares about anything more than premiums and out-of-pocket, not actual cost. But in the UK, for instance, total spending is much smaller per-GDP for not terrible results.
In the UK and everywhere else. In general socialized medical systems achieve better outcomes for the buck than private ones... and in fact even within the single payer bunch, more socialized systems are more efficient thsn private run ones. This was in one of my textbooks in uni, alongside refs to the studies, alas I dont have that onnhand anymore.
By the way, I wouldn't regard the NHS as being the best nowadays, at the very least in my field. Years of funding cuts have made penny pinching part of the official policy, NICE guidelines are lagging behind the rest of the continent, and the outcomes are likewise lagging behind.
I think stress on the system as a result of an increasingly elderly population (who use up far more than their share of NHS resources) is the primary factor in our lagging behind. Sadly, if this socialist dream is to continue, and however unpleasant it might seem, we need to get some Malthusian/Logan's Run shit all up in this.
I pinkyswear that THAT is not the main issue. In general NHS cancer protocols lag behind. Even the HSE, which is itself a copy of the NHS with more copayment from patients, has better hi-tec drug avaiability. And that's despite the fact that half the time their protocols are NHS ones with the anagrams filed off.
I can tell you for instance that until late last year revlimid was only given to late stage multiple myeloma (and I'm not sure how widespread it's use upfront is today), whereas back home we were already frequently using it frontline at the beginning of the decade.
It's hardly an isolated example. I could name two or three more specific examples of the NICE guidelines being restrictive on expensive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures without thinking too hard. And it's not just me.
KCL published a study on the subjectI'm pointing this out because the NHS was one of the first socialized healthcare systems in the world (possibly the first complete one) and yet slowly over the last 10 years the British people are being corraled into accepting either less services or a privatization, or more likely both. In a way some of these measures have already been implemented ("*insert name of Trust* Private? Wtf?). But I get the feeling that someone somewhere is preparing lube to try something more radical in the near future
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14912129 times)