Posted on 02/23/2008 9:29:08 AM PST by kellynla
NEW YORK -- Before American voters embrace either Hillary Clinton’s universal-health scheme or Barack Obama’s somewhat less dirigiste single-payer proposal, they should consider the avoidable deaths that plague the mother of all state-run medical programs: Great Britain’s big-government National Health Service. Low-quality, taxpayer-funded health care killed more than 17,000 Britons in 2004, according to the TaxPayers’ Alliance in London.
No one can complain that the NHS is underfinanced. This year’s budget is $210 billion -- about $1.05 trillion if adjusted to match America’s population. NHS funding climbed 221.7 percent between 1996 and 2006. Despite such largesse, “we have not increased the pace of improvement in the most important measurement of its output -- its ability to save lives,” laments Professor Karol Sikora, a leader of Doctors for Reform, which hopes to inject competition and choice into British medicine.
Such goals are rare in a sector ensnared in bureaucracy. The British Department of Health supervises the NHS. In turn, the NHS includes Primary Care Trusts, NHS Trusts, and Regional Strategic Health Authorities. Drugs are controlled by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (warmly nicknamed “NICE”). The NHS Pay Review Body oversees staff compensation. Connecting for Health runs the National Programme for IT, reportedly Earth’s single, largest information technology initiative. Within this maze, it is no surprise that patient needs often yield to the wants of politicians and medicrats.
The consequences for these political considerations can be ugly.
Poor sanitation has become the NHS’ latest worry. The BBC’s Danielle Glavin worked undercover at a government hospital in Kent. “On my first day, as I emptied bins, swept, and mopped, I noticed old blood stains ingrained on the floor,” Glavin reported. In one surgical theater, “a blood-stained gown was left on a trolley for 24 hours, and used medical instruments were discarded in a sink for a day.”
This helps explain why the British government estimated that 9 percent of inpatients in 2000 suffered hospital-acquired infections. The bacterium Clostridium difficile often is associated with hospital outbreaks and extended medical stays. English and Welsh death certificates citing C. diff as a cause or contributing factor grew from about 1,000 in 1999 to 3,807 in 2005.
Diseases snuff Britons sooner than they do others in the developed world. A September 2007 Lancet Oncology article found 66.3 percent of American men alive five years after cancer diagnosis. Among male Finns, that figure was 55.9 percent, while only 44.8 percent of Englishmen survived after five years. Across the European Union, 20.1 females per 100,000 under 65 died prematurely of circulatory disease. Among British women, that number was 23.6.
Collectively, these data strongly rebuff the notion that America’s imperfect health care industry needs a booster shot of mandates and regulations. What it sorely lacks is more choice, competition, and freedom, and loads less government.
Sen. John McCain’s ideas -- among them, expanded health-savings accounts; individually owned, portable health-insurance policies available across state lines; and medical-lawsuit reform -- are the antidote to the “health care with a British accent” that Clinton or Obama would import, unless American voters stop them.
TPA examined the World Health Organization’s latest-available data to contrast the NHS with the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish health systems, which are less government-dominated. Specifically, the pro-market group measured “mortality amenable to healthcare” -- those deaths that a medical organization realistically should prevent. While those four countries averaged a 106.6 amenable mortality rate, Britain was almost 29 percent deadlier, with its rate of 135.3. TPA thus calculates that the NHS took the lives of 17,157 Britons who otherwise would have survived were they treated by doctors across the English Channel. This figure is more than two-and-a-half times Britain’s yearly alcohol-related deaths, and is quintuple its annual highway fatalities. Comparing 60 million Brits to 300 million Yanks, this is like a federally operated health agency eliminating 85,785 Americans in 2004.
“Anyone looking to reform the American healthcare system should learn lessons from the European experience,” says Matthew Sinclair, the TPA policy analyst who authored this study. “Britain’s NHS has produced dismally poor results. Thousands die every year, thanks to its poor performance and its failure to make good use of new resources. Other European healthcare systems deliver greater competition, decentralization, and independence from political meddling.”
Can our Brit Freepers give us input on this? Otherwise, I think this thread will be lampooned as another “Yanks posting something about Britain that they know nothing about!”
[The problem is the majority of American are lazy and are bordering on functional stupidity.]
Man on the street questions.
Who was the last democrat president?
Who was the last republican president?
What is the President’s term in office?
Please see my tagline for the appropriate bumper sticker...
Brilliant.
Need to bookmark this one. Anyone who’s lived in another country will realize that while our health care is not perfect (because nothing ever is), it’s better than anywhere else.
I hate the insane jury awards in malpractice cases, but thank G-d for malpractice suits even being ALLOWED in this country. Some CYA is over the top and cruel to doctors. But no CYA means no oversight and many needless mistakes, and doctors who think they are gods, and patients with no recourse.
Long live a free medical system in the USA.
Post of the Day nominee.
bookmark
“HSA’s etc...”
I’ve been in plenty of Democratic Congressional offices. They know lots about these, and HATE THEM.
The weird thing is that congressional staffers often enroll in the HSA plans, since they are affordable. There are at least 2 or 3 HSA enrollees in every Democratic office I’ve been in. There is sort of “underground support” for HSA’s in Democratic Washington among the cash-strapped staffers.
UMM yes mr r/g and so you tink that dr’s here are not just chompin at the bit to sink their teeth into a lib dem’s dreamboat of a single payer healthcare disaster/rip off? a buddy of mine is a dr in no. il...worked as a g.p. at a clinic there...once i asked him how he liked it...’dave’,he says, ‘im nuthin but a fed/state/clinic employee.....in order to make any real money at this how many patients do u think i have to see a single day?’ ‘dunno’, say i. ‘35’, says he. so this guy spends a 3rd of his live studyin to be a sawbones givin up a lot of hours of fun in his youth to become a freakin state and fed employee...
how rotten is that? He also said ‘im so overwhelmed number wise that i cant possibly spend as much time with my patients as i need, and they know it to, they feel rushed’
That ladies and gemmins was at least 10 yrs ago...fast forward to today and then 5 years form now after the lib/dems foist a socialized healthcare monster on unsuspecting american patients...’BEAM ME OUT OF THAT NIGHTMARE SCOTTY’
As mark styn once said.....’if america is forced into socialized medicine...where will canadian heart patients go to get treatment?’ IT’S THAT BAD FOLKS ....
Insurance companies don't produce anything. They just squeeze doctors and deny patients claims...so how can more of them result in better care?
Medical costs can be reduced by collective bargaining with drug companies, by tort reform, by getting rid of insurance companies. But none of that is enough.
The sickest 3% of those under 65 account for over 50% of medical costs for that group. In the over 65 age group the last couple of years of a person's life account for some HUGE percent of TOTAL medical spending. Severely reduce public spending on those two groups and almost anything else you do will be alright.
The bottom 50% of earners pay only 4% of income taxes (excluding FICA and Social Security). So how can they possibly pay for their own health care? On the other end of the scale the top 1/10th of one percent of earners pay something like 17% of income taxes and own 30% of the nation's wealth...so who says a more socialistic system wouldn't work? Of course it would.
The best we have ever done in Senate campaigns was when Sen. Bill Frist was in charge of the Senate campaign committee. Even though he has stepped down from the Senate, he should be appealed to on this issue. He seemed to have a real feel for it. Elizabeth Dole was a disaster and should never get anyplace close to the SCC ever again.
Bump
Not so sure about that. Isn't the IRS owed millions from taxpayers?
Compared to the trillions that they collect? I'd say that they're damn good at collection.
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