I knew a nephrologist who left medical practice in the UK who used to tell his colleagues in the US that socialized medicine will mean rationing of kidney dialysis. In the UK the number of dialysis machines was strictly limited and doctors had to make decisions as to who would get treatment and who would die of kidney failure.
“I knew a nephrologist who left medical practice in the UK who used to tell his colleagues in the US that socialized medicine will mean rationing of kidney dialysis. In the UK the number of dialysis machines was strictly limited and doctors had to make decisions as to who would get treatment and who would die of kidney failure.”
75% of all ESRD patients using dialysis are on Medicare and another 10% are on Medicaid Primary. That means dialysis is pretty much handled by socialized INSURANCE already and has been since the mid-late 60s. No rationing has even been discussed in the 40 years it has been done this way.
It has been discussed in multiple BMJ articles but it has yet to be implemented in the UK though there is likely talk of covert rationing on those that are considered terminal with other diseases such as stage IV cancers. This is also being done is rural parts of the US already where centers to population ratios are really bad.
Maybe the idea is to not go to socialized MEDICINE (aka single payer PLUS all healtcare workers and facilities are employeese and owned by the state). That is how it is done in the UK and that is not what has been proposed in the US.
We have socialized medicine in the VA hospitals, no one is talking about making that type of system universal.