Here’s what you can expect in the brave new health care world Donald Berwick, Obama’s new CMS administrator, has planned for you. The NHS, which Berwick “loves,” is running out of money (as will Medicare in the not-too-distant future) and the average Brit will pay a heavy price for depending on the nanny state for health care:
NHS bosses have drawn up secret plans for sweeping cuts to services, with restrictions on the most basic treatments for the sick and injured.
What, specifically, does that mean?
Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.
The problem with “free� health care is that it’s too expensive to sustain indefinitely. Eventually, the big-government leach sucks the host (that would be you, Mr. Taxpayer) dry, whereupon it has to cut back on services. So, the patient (you again) receives lousy care and worse medicines in dilapidated hospitals. That’s where all this is going folks.
Comments 4
I see you’re lapping up another scare story in a British right wing newspaper. It’s true of course that if you withdraw funding you will have to cut services – but that’s not going to happen as the new government has explicitly ringfenced health. And cutting the NHS could only have one result – driving up costs to the consumer up as they have to buy private insurance and leaving behind many as you did in the US until Obama came along.
Posted 26 Jul 2010 at 7:24 am ¶Actually cutting the NHS, in a sane country (note: you do not live in a sane country), would cause your taxes to drop catastrophically (since healthcare is, by far, the largest line item in British budgets), thus not only giving you plenty of extra cash to buy private insurance but money left over to spend on other things like, say, books on debate that define things like non sequitur, ad hominem and tu quoque, for example.
Posted 26 Jul 2010 at 12:03 pm ¶You know not what you write ECM. As you must know the only reason cuts are being talked about in any sector of the economy is because you Americans have half-bankrupted the world. And even if taxes were cut only the well-off could afford the healthcare premiums. As you’ve found out in the US the fastest way to fuel runaway insurance rises is to have rampant privatisation. I suggest you read up on a little history and find out why the NHS was founded in the first place.
Posted 26 Jul 2010 at 4:31 pm ¶This makes good sense. The purpose of the NHS is to maintain the productivity of the subjects of the Queen. Productivity = taxes paid. Unable to pay taxes? Too bad. Cost to return you to tax paying status exceeds the taxes you can be expected to pay? So sorry. Go die.
Marc Brown is part of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s posse, out to extract every last pence from the sheeple. Resistence is Futile, you will be ruled.
Remember this….
Posted 27 Jul 2010 at 5:57 am ¶Post a Comment