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Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

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Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#191

Post by robertlagrant »

raffraffraff wrote: post #134
jeromegv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have actively worked at crippling it. Now that it’s crippled they tell you.. oh but surely the government can’t fix it, we need private enterprises to fix it! You walked right into it. What makes you think private business are capable of delivering something cheaper than what the government can do? The most expensive health care in the world is private.

Exactly. Why would it be cheaper or better to run healthcare as a for-profit business? If you have to take a profit, then by definition there's less funds available for the actual service.

The point of private enterprise is it has to cost less or be a better product to survive, which is why things like cars are unbelievably better than they were 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago.

E.g. saying a state-run car company would've done better because all that profit money would've been perfectly allocated is not right. Otherwise the government's perfect decision-makers would be starting car companies left and right and making a fortune, instead of working for the government.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#192

Post by bufferoverflow »

zeryx wrote: post #189

We have the same issues in Canada with our public health system. No one wants to talk about this, but my unpopular opinion is the real problem is our retirement program and lack of fertility - we're way too generous, and without a tax base there's only so much we can do. Unless a politician actually makes the unpopular move to cut retirement benefits or massively increase fertility this is only going to get worse.

Increasing fertility won't do much for the next ~20 years. It takes a long time to raise a taxpayer.

Automation is the way.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#193

Post by tremon »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #136

> If the current trajectory continues, the number of non-Covid excess deaths will soon outstrip deaths from the virus this year – and be even more deadly than the omicron wave. I have friends in the UK and the USA who all during the pandemic were asking, what about the unintended consequences? Where are the models for the impact of these decisions? What are the numbers of collateral damage? There were no answers. Any…

What unintended consequences are we talking about here? The problems in the article don't stem from lockdowns, they stem from delays caused by capacity problems in the healthcare system.

So, if anything, the article describes the unintended consequences of those who deliberately kept fighting all measures to curb the spread of COVID.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#194

Post by rob_c »

verytrivial wrote: post #170
rob_c wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But let's ignore the blairite solution to sell the land and get further into debt and refuse to take more money from the populace or detach NHS funding from state pensions...

I'm not sure this is a very strong defence of how the Government has managed the NHS since then, though is it? Or should I read this as a veiled appeal for Corbyn to return as the leader of the Opposition for another try? (In which case I'll take my leave.)

I'm not citing evidence for that I'm showing how both sides of the political divide won't dare touch the holy cow that is the NHS.

It's interesting how every time you show there's a problem with a political party everyone assumes instead of damning the system your trying to politically point score. I think the real change needs to be made in the civil service and certain powers striped from Whitehall but it'll never happen.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#195

Post by rleigh »

ben_w wrote: post #94
thrown_22 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left has somehow ended up as the party of the political managerial class instead of the working class, this is one of the best explanations why we're in such a weird place where the socialists are all trust fund kids who would rather have the working class arrested than talk to them.

If the (UK) left is the party of the political managerial class, what is the (UK) right? When I'm feeling particularly sarcastic I might call them the party of dilettantes, but is that apt?

Oddly, things kind of flipped around (in very broad terms). The left is where some of the well-off urban middle classes are, along with the far-left socialists. The right is where the less well off but working are, along with some non-urban upper- and middle-class voters. Because for a lot of working class people (primarily those who work, and aren't living off state support), they have been entirely abandoned by Labour after being treated as guaranteed votes for decades. This is a big part of what the so-called "Red Wall" is. It's socially conservative (small "C") workers from traditionally Labour constituencies. People who have aspirations and don't want to be held back.

While this wasn't previously the case, the spatial and socioeconomic patterns are increasingly similar to that of the Democrat/Republican voters in the US, from what I can tell. The leftward travel of the Democrats is a large part of that. But the left/right inversion in the UK has been slowly coming for decades, but the FPTP system hid that in the outcomes.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#196

Post by klabb3 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #183
r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the demand to have a documented policy, procedure and metrics for everything even if no one ever reads them, follows them or analyses them is insane. At the same time there's been this huge increase in the amount of useless correspondence and a cultural shift away from hiring people to help manage and filter this stuff so people can do actual work (aka old school secretaries and admin assistants). Harrumph

IMHO, every required documentation policy should have its opportunity cost measured against the decrease in actual work being done. E.g. "Do we think this form being filled out is worth someone not being able to see a doctor?"

Yes it SHOULD be. But the anxious leaders want more data for no other reason than to look at it and think they're more informed, when in reality they are not. It's like being addicted to looking in the mirror. It's good if you can notice the chocolate around your mouth, but more than that isn't helping, it's just a hobby. Only in this case your hobby is destroying everyone else's joy and productivity.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#197

Post by simonswords82 »

rleigh wrote: post #182
matthewmacleod wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this is a common and totally unjustified take. The NHS is fairly frequently subject to alteration and reform in various ways, and there is no real truth to the “piles of bureaucracy and waste” stories - it remains broadly pretty efficient as a healthcare system when compared with other developed countries. You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK - this is almost universally not a…

> You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK I mentioned that we don't have the right to opt out of paying for the NHS. It's not possible go entirely private. If you could opt out, you could pay that money to a private provider instead and entirely forego the use of the NHS. That isn't an option today. But it should be.

I think if you’re forced to go private due to long nhs wait times the money you have spent on paying for the nhs via your taxes should be refunded to cover private care cost

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#198

Post by rob_c »

neverrroot wrote: post #29

The Great Barrington Declaration, unfortunately cancelled by mass media and the people in power.

Don't worry, in 5 years we will likely read how those in charge then spoke out but we're silenced and how they knew all along and fought the good fight for us in their ivory towers...

It was a simple mathematic close airports not schools of you're so concerned but the past is now behind us.

Oh and did you know the GBD was secretly funded by evil big right wing oil against the family friendly big pharma with asbestos in the talc and roundup in your food...

(Sorry I think I got a bit cynical even for this topic)

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#199

Post by rob_c »

kurthr wrote: post #49
neverrroot wrote: post #29

The Great Barrington Declaration, unfortunately cancelled by mass media and the people in power.

So, if they don't die in the first wave of COVID, they need to die of underfunding? I mean sterilizing immunity through infection is now known (through many thousands of documented re-infections and likely hundreds of millions) to be both irresponsible and a failure. However, if the goal was to reduce the long term cost of the British medical system through the death of it's oldest and most expensive, then perhaps th…

No post body was provided.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#200

Post by XorNot »

rleigh wrote: post #182
matthewmacleod wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this is a common and totally unjustified take. The NHS is fairly frequently subject to alteration and reform in various ways, and there is no real truth to the “piles of bureaucracy and waste” stories - it remains broadly pretty efficient as a healthcare system when compared with other developed countries. You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK - this is almost universally not a…

> You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK I mentioned that we don't have the right to opt out of paying for the NHS. It's not possible go entirely private. If you could opt out, you could pay that money to a private provider instead and entirely forego the use of the NHS. That isn't an option today. But it should be.

"opt out" is how conservative parties kill public healthcare systems.

Because the public healthcare system winds up subsidizing the private one: private insurers dump bad risks onto it when they get too expensive too insure, after years or collecting the payments that don't go to the public system.

It's the definition of privatizing profits and socializing risk.

You want to opt out? You get to opt all the way out. You don't get to come back, it's a one way street. Still keen?

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