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.”
Oh yeah!
Well, they're pretty damn good a collecting taxes..... :o
The problem is the majority of American are lazy and are bordering on functional stupidity.
They are bombarded with “the health care issue” by the big media because it is one of the issues that their party, the Democrats, are pushing. Do any of them really know squat about the socialist programs? NO, they simply believe change is good.
Oh, and another thing, they think the rich will pay for it.
Once the Feds have our health care system under their thumb, the completion of the destruction of our economy will be completed.
The important factor is that everyone is killed equally.
Yes, it's important that productive members of society receive the same quality of care as provided to a career welfare bum.
They've been suggesting this option for some time now. They would simply treat every uninsured American as if they were a new civil service employee and send them an enrollment form. In two weeks, the person would be covered and able to receive medical care.
This has been my health care program for years (I'm a retired federal employee), so I can tell you that I've followed this issue. AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) and the state unions are pushing the same idea - one program for all Americans.
Within the plan, you can choose from Blue Cross or a myriad of HMO's. The coverage is adequate but not plush. There are many workers who have better coverage than I do. For instance, I have a relative who's a teacher, and her husband is a postal worker, and she calls his FEHB plan "crap" compared to hers, so they're both on her cushion plan that has a lot of frills.
That said, the FEHB plans have a low co-pay. For Blue Cross, I pay $15 a visit. I have no problem in getting treatment or getting my bills paid. However, if you need surgery, there's a 25 percent copay. So if your surgery is $6,000, then your copay is $1,500. Try paying off that bill on a retiree's pension.
I have concerns that if they open up this plan to all Americans and illegal immigrants and relatives of Indian doctors and computer professionals who come here and bring their parents who they then dump on welfare - then how is that going to dilute the quality of health care offered by the program? It'll turn into a gigantic welfare program with many people paying nothing but costs rising for those of us who are now paying premiums. And care will diminish, such as you have a choice of three doctors in your entire city area, like under welfare.
Last time I was at the DMV I told them, “you guys should run the hospitals too. This is great.”
“Well, they’re pretty damn good a collecting taxes..... :o”
If you think that, then you’ve got another thought coming.LOL
FYI, half of Americans don’t even pay federal income taxes.
And I won’t even get into the tens of millions of illegal aliens who don’t pay federal income taxes either.
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.
i WONDER IF OBAMAMA KNOWS ABOUT THISE THINGS...?
The problem is the majority of American are lazy and are bordering on functional stupidity.
They are bombarded with “the health care issue” by the big media because it is one of the issues that their party, the Democrats, are pushing. Do any of them really know squat about the socialist programs? NO, they simply believe change is good.
Oh, and another thing, they think the rich will pay for it.
Once the Feds have our health care system under their thumb, the completion of the destruction of our economy will be completed.
PESCIENT
Interesting article. During the same period (2004), the United States suffered 849 combat deaths in Iraq. This, of course, is the fault of evil President Bush who had the audacity to resolve to rid the world of the tyrant Hussein and radical islamic terrorists.
Liberal facists in the UK killed a mere 17,000 during the same period foisting their brand of national socialism on an unsuspecting public. What would be the number of deaths in the U.S. with the same system?
Socialists hold the undisputed record for human deaths in the Twentieth Century, well over 60 million and counting. It seems that Hillary/Obama are determined to lay an early claim for the Twenty-First.
you got it all right in one paragraph.......
THE LAST ONE...
Bingo!
The costs always rise for those with even pennies to pay for it.
Not really. They collect well from honest people. Dishonest people skate by all the time.
bump for future ref
bump
Government health care will kill 85,000 people a year. We must either retain the presidency or gain the Senate. This nation is in serious trouble if a Democrat president has a Democrat Congress; especially since Rinos in the Senate will break a filibuster.
There is virtually no way we regain the senate. We are likely to lose seats in the senate as 8 of the 9 ‘open’ or contested seats are held by Republicans. It would take a McCain tidal wave for us to regain the senate (at least a national 12% win probably)
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