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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

#211

Post by starkd »

jeromegv wrote: post #121
starkd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure government bureaucracy is even capable of doing this? It never had a great track record to begin with.

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.

It is the organizing structure that is more efficient. It's not perfect, but just more resonspive to changes over time.

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

#212

Post by Aerroon »

Folcon wrote: post #122
starkd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure government bureaucracy is even capable of doing this? It never had a great track record to begin with.

I don't wish to be snarky, but you are aware that the NHS as an institution has existed since the late 1940's and has been working reasonably well for a long time? An institution does not become beloved by the public for failing to provide a good standard of care for a long enough time that people become used to it doing so. So when you say: > It never had a great track record to begin with. Are you talking about gov…

>An institution does not become beloved by the public for failing to provide a good standard of care for a long enough time that people become used to it doing so.

Here's how you do it: you pump unsustainable amounts of money into the service over time. This allows you to offer a great service until in the future you can't pump enough money into it anymore. But that's a problem for the future generations. Those future generations were funding the previous generations all the while, but won't get the same benefits themselves.

An ever increasing percentage of GDP is being poured into the UK's NHS. At some point it's going to be too costly and the young generation at that time will have to pay for it, but won't get the same level of service themselves when they're older. They will be the ones left holding the bag.

I don't think there's a politically viable solution to this though. The problem with this model is that you're effectively borrowing from future generations, but the system takes so long to reach actual unsustainability that people will grow up with the feeling that the system is great.

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

#213

Post by hotpotamus »

mgerdts wrote: post #203
hotpotamus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem all that realistic - that's pretty surprising that they were willing to quote a price for the test ahead of time.

Apparently they do this so that people aren't surprised at the magnitude of the bill. Last September I got a covid test at the same place as I had symptoms and was just about to travel. They didn't provide an estimate at that time, but looking at my insurance statement, I see they billed $394.35. The negotiated rate meant that the provider was paid $184.98. Looking back at my past estimates, I see that in 2015 the es…

Indeed, transparent pricing is a plainly obvious requirement of a free market, which is why lots of business "innovations" are ways to hide pricing. Where it breaks down in my mind is that we have a hard time assigning a market value to human morbidity and mortality.

I have my own story of US healthcare which may be enlightening. It happened to a friend of mine. Let's say this friend is not particularly well to do and lived with his 2 brothers, but they don't always get along that well. At some point, they got into an argument that escalated into an altercation where one brother broke a poolstick over my buddy's head. He had a concussion and laceration needing stiches, so he went to the ER. He was unable to remember his name or which ER treated him, and as a result, was never billed for the care provided and learned the key to universal healthcare in the US - he just gives a fake name at the ER now.

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

#214

Post by pharmakom »

jeromegv wrote: post #121
starkd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure government bureaucracy is even capable of doing this? It never had a great track record to begin with.

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.

This makes me wonder… if Conservative strategy is to run it into the ground and then privatise, which is an unpopular plan with the public, then how are they able to consistently win elections?

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

#215

Post by odiroot »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #71
jajahusjsna wrote: post #8

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. - Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for t…

Maybe I'm just a nerd, but this bit: > Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone) Doesn't really strike me as a bad thing in itself. Once you get past the front line, things get pretty specialist and a general move to Telemedicine is probably a good thing, and is presumably happening all around the world for all sorts of reasons. People even do telesurgery now. And…

Preventive care is absolutely the most important to keep the society healthy and moving forward.

Currently people just give up on contacting their surgeries, letting their symptoms develop into something potentially more dangerous. Then they end up at A&E, overloading the hospitals.

Maybe it's not so bad in the 3 biggest cities (possibly due competing private services), but at smaller cities and towns, it's impossible to see your GP. I see people complaining about it in pretty much every media.

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

#216

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #191
raffraffraff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Only if there is both competition and consumers can make informed judgements on the service.

In things that affect your health, I don't want to be the guinea pig that discovers the service I paid for wasn't up to standard. That provider may go bust in the long run, but in the meantime will do a lot of damage.

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

#217

Post by creato »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #163
ajross wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NHS and Medicare have historically had both very efficient allocation of resources and excellent health outcomes. This NHS argument is about new data that to me seems impossible to deconflate with a global pandemic. Basically, libertarians are just wrong on this. Government-run health care works great and we have many decades of evidence showing that.

This is the first time I have ever heard of Medicare being held up as efficient. Medicare is 13% of the US government budget. More federal money goes to Medicare than to the Department of Defense. In contrast, the care that people get from Medicare is substantially worse than what you get from private insurance in the US.

> In contrast, the care that people get from Medicare is substantially worse than what you get from private insurance in the US.

I don’t think they are comparable. Medicare exists because private insurers refuse to cover old people at a reasonable price. It’s a good scam the private insurers have going: take peoples money when they are generally healthy and productive, drop them like a sack of shit onto the government’s lap when they aren’t.

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

#218

Post by addicted »

I’ve noticed a resistance in the U.S. and UK to look outside. Both countries appear to believe they are unique or special and are simply unwilling to look at how the rest of the world is doing things.

Almost all the questions and unknowns posed in this article can be answered by simply looking at neighboring European countries and seeing if they’re seeing the same levels of non COVID excess deaths.

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

#219

Post by ZeroGravitas »

robertlagrant wrote: post #191
raffraffraff wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

If fossil fueled cars burning leaded fuel on state funded roads and then getting bailed out not that long ago is your idea of free enterprise triumphing over the state, you might not be as capitalist as you think you are.

"Bob Lutz compares Tesla to socialism after GM took $11B from taxpayers under his reign"

https://electrek.co/2016/08/18/bob-lutz-compares-tesla-socia...

I agree that cars are much better than they were 10 years ago. Thanks mostly to government regulations that the incumbent industry fought strongly, while Chinese state owned firms were taking advantage of the opportunity.

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

#220

Post by Fiahil »

kergonath wrote: post #58
scrlk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are never going to get a serious debate around reforming the NHS until people move on from only comparing the UK to the US. There are many other systems that work - people only need to look across to Europe.

> people only need to look across to Europe That would be politically risky these days… The UK needs to come back to Earth before this happens.

We (France) like to compare our sécurité sociale to the NHS, but only to remember that ours is not so bad after all. It’s never been the subject of serious debates, and the USA even less (rightfully).
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