---------- From: Ken Brown[SMTP:k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk] Reply To: k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 11:21 AM To: Trei, Peter Cc: Cypherpunks; 'Nathan Saper' Subject: Re: why should it be trusted?
"Trei, Peter" wrote:
Nathan, have you ever actually looked at socialized medicine? It's fine for some things, but not for others. Illnessess which can be cured and which curing will return a person to productive labour get treated - after a while. Illnessess which strike late in life and/or require expensive treatment get much shorter shrift.
This isn't really true. The NHS tends to be quite good at big stuff, serious interventions. The UK is also quite good for fixing small 1-off problems (the poor wait in line, the less poor just pay same as anywhere else). What it isn't so good at is chronic but not life-threatening problems. In other words, just the ones "which curing will return a person to productive labour". Of course these are also the exact same health problems that private health insurance is worst at.
I've read various stories (mostly in New Scientist and The Economist) about people being refused expensive chemotherapy by the NHS.
Why do you think Austin Power's teeth were a running joke?[...]
Dentistry in the UK is almost entirely private & sometimes used as an example of why publicly provided healthcare is supposed to be better! Except for the poorest, we pay for it out of our own pockets (as adults anyway, there is a certain amount of public provision for children). Same applies to opticians & so on.
I stand corrected. The fact remains that bad teeth are part of the American stereotype of Britons.
There are a lot of problems (particularly local ones in London because nationally set budgets don't reflect the cost of provision here - the district I'm in has over 20% shortfall in the number of nurses on the staff because they aren't paid enough), but on the whole I think you'll find few Brits who would give up the idea of the NHS. After all we live longer than you do, on average (assuming you are USAn), are slightly poorer to start with & spend a *lot* less on healthcare per head, public & private combined. In fact you spend almost as much on "socialised" medicine as we do, far less cost-effectively.
... and you have a continuous brain drain of doctors to the greener fields of the US.
Ken
Peter Trei