The U.K. didn’t always have socialized medicine. The slide into the abyss started out by a requirement shortly after WW II that everyone purchase insurance. Does that sound familiar?
Here’s what we have to look forward to:
Tens of thousands of lung cancer patients are being denied life-saving surgery on the NHS, a shocking report reveals.
Fewer than one in ten sufferers is being given an operation to remove tumours that is routinely offered in most other countries in the Western world.
Experts say the disease is being spotted far too late so by the time it is diagnosed, it is inoperable.
“…to late to operate.” Which is the whole point of the exercise.
Can’t wait for the seniors in this country to get a second helping of what aarp did TO them. First course was the aarp’s raising of their insurance rates next year after having been a major supporter of obumblecare.
My Friend’s parents are both British MDs, they moved from UK to Canada to escape the Socialized medicine which they felt would be abusive to doctors. They then moved to Maine when Canada went Red. I suspect they’ll simply retire before this monstrosity takes form.
I happen to know quite a few retired physicians, and just about all of them retired when their malpractice insurance rate went up, and they felt they were old enough to stop swallowing it.
Under the new system not only will demand for doctors skyrocket….but the supply will dry up over night, and people thinking about going to medical school will think twice.
One of the comments to that article from a British lung cancer patient is pretty telling.
After all, lung cancer is self-inflicted, right?~ If that’s the case, it’s only right to save that money for unavoidable surgeries instead.~
Once the government is in control, individuals lose all control.
Yes, lung cancer is self-inflicted…except when it isn’t.
I had an aunt-in-law who recently died from lung cancer. She was old, and to the best of my knowledge, she had never smoked; she may, or may not, have been old enough to be a Down-Winder, and while in the last years of her life, she was in a place where that may have made a difference, she may or may not have been living in a Down-Winder place when the nuclear tests were being conducted. I can’t remember all of the details.
And, do you know what? The details don’t matter, because lung cancer can happen to anyone.
Absolutely true, and I didn’t mean to offend anyone – my statements were attempted sarcasm, which doesn’t always carry well on the internet (denoted by the snark mark, which admittedly isn’t very well known).
The .gov bureaucrats trying to limit health care costs at the expense of people’s well being, though, will be sure to drag out the smoking argument every time they think they can get away with it, whether it’s relevant or not.
This is all by design. “Collapse the system into a new system”. Cloward & Piven.
If you think these global communist agitators are merely mistaken about causes and effects, or that they’re just plain butt stupid, you’re missing the whole point.
The Europeans are rioting in the streets, not because the governments are going broke, per se, and not because socialist democracy is being proven wrong. That would be the American thought process, but their brains are conditioned to work differently. The rioting Euros are pissed off that they haven’t been given full-on communism yet. They’re impatient. This is their moment, and they see it being squandered. It will most likely be happening here more often, too.
@Jake: I wasn’t taking offense to your remarks; I was echoing them, because the attitudes of “Government needs to control health care!” and “Individuals who get affliction X should be punished!” really get under my skin.
So I was railing against those attitudes, rather than your remarks. I could tell that you were being snarky by your last statement: “Once the government is in control, individuals lose all control.”
Doctors, PA’s, and ARNP’s are already retiring about as fast as we can. The writing is on the wall. Although the “desirable jobs” surveys keep rating PA’s and ARNP’s very highly, those in practice for more than a few years are already tired of the ever increasing burden of paperwork we are forced to deal with.
Electronic Medical Records, which were supposed to decrease paperwork, have increased it, and EVERY office I have talked to say they now have MORE people responsible for medical records than they did when every chart was paper! We document in online, and then we get 100 questions about WHY we did this, or did that, or WHY DIDN’T you do this or that?
Add the burdens of obamacare, and small surprise that March of 2010 saw the largest single month of announced retirements in medical history.
Medicine only works when those in the job WANT to work harder to help people, and that happens most consistently when both those served and the server recieve benefit from the service. Medical providers aren’t mercenary per se, but when almost every decision you make gets parsed by multiple, NON-Involved people, the only compensatory mechanism is financial reward.
@Lyle: “It will most likely be happening here more often, too.” Kalifornia should prove your statement real soon. The borrowed money that state is using to pay out unemployment and .gov retired workers is about to disappear. We should see riots and civil disobedience like what’s going on in Europe soon. IOU’s don’t buy groceries or gasoline.
My step brother used his GI bill in the 1980’s to go to England and attend medical school. He felt that the way Dr.’s are treated like crap while in residency in the U.S. was inexcusable, also England does not charge for medical school.
So when you become a doctor in the U.K. two things happen your not going to make a lot of money (at least for 10 years) but it is not that big a deal because you have no debt.
He continued to practice and became a surgeon. He recently moved to Japan to work. Apparently once any Doctor goes to Japan and is treated like a living god they don’t come back.
Miles
PS One funny part of the story, what did England do a month after he graduated with honors? They attempted to deport him pronto. It took a close friend who was a Member of Parliament who took the issue to the floor of Parliament where he gave a speech and then they allowed him to pay back his free medical school with years of working at a public hospital. Stranger than fiction eeh.
I’m kind-of on an semi-anti-college kick right now. I’m not against colleges per se, but what I am for is an apprentice-type system, to replace colleges to a large degree.
How would this work? If I wanted to become a doctor, I would find a doctor’s office I would “apprentice” to, and I would learn as much from those doctors about treating patients as I can; since those doctors ought to be keeping up with the latest research, I’d also be learning about the latest findings. At some point, the doctors may send me to a hospital for an “internship”, where I’d learn more about emergency care, and eventually I’d get to the point where I would be able to treat patients on my own.
I’d also do away with licensing, and let reputation be the key to determining good doctors from bad. Indeed, we have to do this already, because all a license tells us is that someone made it through medical school, and haven’t yet had enough malpractice to justify revoking the license (it takes a lot of malpractice to justify revokation); licensing also prevents medics from the Army from just setting up a shop that specializes in setting bones and stitching up injuries.