Now, UK to outsource heart operations to India

LONDON: In a bid to overcome the long waiting lists in Britain's National Health Service (NHS), some patients suffering from heart and lung ailments may be flown to India for surgery quickly and at almost half the cost, a media report said on Sunday.

NHS chiefs are currently in talks with medical authorities in India to consider the proposals in a desperate bid to cut waiting lists, the 'Sunday Times' said.

A Department of Health spokesman, however, said patients would only be sent to India in exceptional circumstances.

Dr Yaswant Mehrotra, Managing Director of India's Apollo hospital network, told the paper: "We expect negotiations to work out within months. Once this arrangement is in place, patients on British waiting lists can be transferred to Apollo's cardiac, orthopaedic and ophthalmology departments.

"The facility will be available not only for Non- Resident Indians but any patient wishing an early appointment and treatment.

"From our point of view, there is a lot of money in it," he said.

The Indian operations would cost around 3,000 pounds - half the price of surgery in Britain - including the cost of the 12,800-km return flight.

More than a million people in the UK are currently on NHS waiting lists. One has to wait up to nine months for a cataract operation and six months for heart surgery here. The Government pledged to use private facilities in Britain to break the log-jam in waiting times for routine operations.

More than 1,000 British patients had operations abroad last year, including 200 in a trial programme which sent them to France and Germany. If the scheme for operations in Europe proves a success, NHS patients could soon find themselves sent to Mumbai or Delhi, the report said.

The Confederation of Indian Industry has sent a delegation to Britain to discuss the possibility of British insurance companies recognising Indian hospitals.

The move to ease the burden on the NHS comes despite record Government increases in health spending but will be an acute embarrassment for Prime Minister Tony Blair who promised to halt the rise in waiting lists.

Supply and demand, how ya gonna stop it?

Naive, power-hungry bureaucrats "stop" Supply & Demand when they monopolize the practice of medicine by setting artificial prices. A limited Supply cannot keep pace with an unlimited Demand. As so-called "alarmists" once warned, government's eventual solution will be to curtail Demand by limiting treatment for certain conditions and age groups; amazingly, such frightening predictions no longer sound so alarmist.

The collapse of the British and Canadian medical systems' abilities to promptly deliver critical services is evidence of the folly of socialized medicine.

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