Darwin is defeating socialism (again)

There should be some sort of Darwin like award for people that chose such loser economic systems.  I’ve been blogging about this for some time and it just gets worse and worse.  Here is the latest from the failing U.K. medical system:

Hospitals shut wards as cash crisis bites
By Sam Lister, David Charter and Nigel Hawkes

THE spiralling cash crisis in the NHS has already forced two thirds of hospitals to close wards and will soon start directly affecting patient care, health chiefs give warning today.

A survey of 117 chief executives of NHS trusts reveals the depth of concern among healthcare professionals about the destabilising impact of wide-ranging government reforms. Three quarters of them say that growing financial pressures brought on by primary and acute care restructuring will affect patient treatment.

Almost half of hospital trust managers said that building and refurbishment projects were being delayed, while many trusts were also having to make staff redundant and to introduce recruitment freezes.

The poll of trust executives, conducted by Health Service Journal, comes as nursing leaders also give a bleak warning of massive NHS deficits. Their research suggests that health service debts in England will hit £1.2 billion this year, putting up to 4,000 jobs at risk.

The new minister, who will be charged with promoting the reform agenda in the media, is expected to be imposed on the Department of Health in a reshuffle due within days. The jobs of Jane Kennedy, the Minister for quality and patient safety, and Rosie Winterton, the Minister for health services, are both at risk.

The Times understands that a number of senior bureaucrats will also be moved in an attempt to speed up the pace of delivery.

Don’t you just get a thrill at the thought of “a number of senior bureaucrats” being moved in to speed things up?  Are these people using the hospital pharmaceuticals recreationally?

And if this is bad, with recruitment freezes in the U.K., it must be really bad in Germany because the doctors there are threatening to go to work in the U.K.!

Striking doctors on the march
By Roger Boyes
50,000 surgeries closed as GPs threaten to desert Germany and head for Britain, reports our correspondent

THOUSANDS of German doctors threatened yesterday to desert Europe’s most modern health system and work in Britain, rather than put up with declining wages and longer hours.

The doctors, many wearing operating masks, marched through the centre of Berlin to besiege the Health Ministry in the first big demonstration against Angela Merkel’s coalition Government. Hospitals worked at half strength and about 50,000 doctors’ surgeries across the country were closed.

“It’s no longer bearable,” Andreas Dahmen, a 31-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, said. “I earn €2,800 [£1,920] a month here after taxes. I’m moving to England where I can earn double that amount for much less work.”

In Britain, he said, he could expect to earn £3,000 a month after tax, with the promise of bonuses bringing his earnings to £4,500. The hip specialist was speaking in a sea of placards held aloft by his colleagues, announcing: “England, we’re on our way!” and “If you want to see a German doctor, come to England!”.

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3 thoughts on “Darwin is defeating socialism (again)

  1. And the Socialist (I refuse to call them Democrats any longer) party wants to bring the Canadian and UK health services here…

    Something must be done in the US to combat the health care crisis but Socializing it is not the answer. Maybe Tort reform is..

  2. My mother worked for Medical Service Corp. in Spokane, WA back in the ’60s when she witnessed first hand what happens when government intervention hits an industry. I believe it was Medicare (doesn’t matter) that was being implemented in that regon, and they found that since doctors in different areas tended to have different prices for the same services, they created the term “usual and customary” pricing so as to be fair to doctors – if you were accustomed to getting $X for an appendectomy, they would pay out some percentage based on that price. Guess what happened next. Since the only “fair” way to establish what is “usual and customary” is to base it on actual billings to private customers, the doctors start artificially hiking up their prices to spectacular levels, never expecting to actually get paid the full amount. But since they could show that they had in fact been billing a certain price for a certain period of time, that became “usual and customary”. Fast forward to now – this crap has been going on for over 40 years. If there’s a “crisis” it is government created. The answer is to outlaw socialism.

  3. I live in the socialist nightmare that is the UK. Our NHS has slowly but surely increased the number of bureaucrats to provide the million and one reports for Government whilst at the same time health care declines. In addition they then took an extra 1% off everyone just to provide to the NHS which has been eaten up by non health providing areas. Then they refuse people treatment due to them being smokers or overweight to cut down costs.

    The socialist answer is always to increase bureaucracy to investigate the problems not realising it is bureaucracy and this PC thinking that causes them.

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