CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?

[Ken Brown]

"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.

> Why do you
> think Austin Power's teeth were a running joke? The
> state of British (ie, socialized NHS) dentistry  lags *far* behind
> the US, especially in the area of orthodontics.

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. 

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.

Ken