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Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

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Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#161

Post by nobodyandproud »

buro9 wrote: post #99
jrochkind1 wrote: post #68

I hadn't (here in the USA) heard anything about "collapse of emergency healthcare in England" -- can anyone provide some links for some context? What is actually going on, and (to the extent people know/educated guess) why? Have wait times been gradually increasing, or has there been a sudden increase? ("collapse" sounds sudden?) Etc etc.

The Conservative Party have been in power for 12 years. When they gained power they pursued a policy of "austerity" to reduce the size of the govt and local govt, reduce the funding of nationally funded things, and to replace such govt owned things with "public private partnerships". This can be seen everywhere from social care (private care homes), schools (academy schools), transport (where area contracts are bid f…

> It turns out that the British stiff upper lip response to something they're nationally proud of is that they'd rather die than embrace health privatisation. So we're in uncharted territory... the playbook

Good for you guys.

Basic healthcare should be a public service to maximize most coverage at a reasonable quality level.

Not privatized to get the most money for the least amount of service, which is the practice of virtually every long-lived business.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#162

Post by DanBC »

DanBC wrote: post #123
drumhead wrote: post #108

Emergency care hasn't "collapsed". It's under strain from a backlog cases unseen during the pandemic. But collapsed? No.

What would collapse look like? If people are queueing in an ambo for 12 hours why isn't that a sign of collapse? If people are dying of stroke or heart attack at greater rates, because they can't get ED care, why isn't that a sign of collapse?

So, for example: https://twitter.com/mattdiscombe/status/1562108007407919104?...

> Almost 333,000 hours were lost by ambulance crews because of handover delays in the 12 months to July 2022 – 18 TIMES higher than the 17,600 hours lost during the same period in 2019 to 2020.

What's this if it's not collapse?

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#163

Post by nobodyandproud »

trappist wrote: post #135
buro9 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Conservative Party have been in power for 12 years. When they gained power they pursued a policy of "austerity" to reduce the size of the govt and local govt, reduce the funding of nationally funded things, and to replace such govt owned things with "public private partnerships". This can be seen everywhere from social care (private care homes), schools (academy schools), transport (where area contracts are bid f…

NIH budget has increased over 40% since 2015. https://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/pdfs/FY22/spending-hist/Me...

NIH is not NHS.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#164

Post by nobodyandproud »

cas14655 wrote: post #146

Quoted post unavailable.

Compared to the cesspool that is the US system? The NHS was amazing.

We don’t talk about it, but people still die for non-COVID emergencies because hospitals in the Us are routinely full in 2022.

Privatization of hospital systems in the US have lead to very warped incentives, where C sections are the norm because it’s faster and more money for the hospital and Drs.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#165

Post by rsynnott »

rjsw wrote: post #159
rsynnott wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching from next door (we've had STV PR in Ireland since independence), I never got this. PR _wasn't on offer_. Unless you actually preferred first past the post to AV (PR > FPTP > AV seems like a weird preference ranking, but I suppose it might be _someone's_), why on earth didn't you vote for AV?

I live in a safe seat but feel that if I lived elsewhere then I could get the same effect as AV by just voting tactically.

You might very well _feel_ that, but unless everyone votes tactically (which would require coordination), it's not really true.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#166

Post by brutusborn »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #144
brutusborn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your strawmam is accurate, stroke survivors will need an ambulance. But you're forgetting that a lot of people get driven to emergency by friends or family. And if those bystanders pass a private hospital on the way to public emergency, they could decide their friend / family members life is worth the extra cost. Of course it wouldn't work for everyone, but it would ease the pressure on a failing system. Also your to…

I drove my father to the hospital when he was having a stroke. To be fair, I didn't know until he told the nurses. Just because someone is being driven by family doesn't mean that it isn't serious nor that there is realistically a chance to call around because of price. I don't care if you find my tone constructive, by the way. The issues I've raise are real issues, and if you can't explain how you'd get around these…

I didn't suggest anything about seriousness of conditions, and the parent did not suggest having different quality of care for poor people. You are projecting your own politics onto our comments. The issues you have raised are real but irrelevant to the comment "What if the government allowed private enterprise to open emergency clinics in times of great need?" I addressed your first criticism (incapacitated patients) and you responded with a personal anecdote connected to a nonsensical sentence about price. I'm not going to go through the rest of them.

I'm not sure why you are so belligerent, without engagement in each others arguments this is pointless so I'll stop here.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#167

Post by dmix »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #65
dmix wrote: post #13

Canada is having the same issue with 20hr waits in the emergency room and others being rejected outright https://globalnews.ca/news/9066662/emergency-rooms-canada-bi... I’ve heard a big part is all the doctors have been going on vacation all at once now that COVID is largely over, after not taking them for two years. They don’t have enough staff to cover even partial shortages. That plus the elephant in the room of p…

There's a public sector salary cap in many parts of Canada, despite roaring inflation. And a general vibe from the public and the government that generally despises public sector unions and would almost certainly backlash against nurses and teachers should they sensibly decide to go on strike. For two years they busted their asses for the public in tough straits and now COVID numbers in the hospital system are still…

No comment on unions but I never understood the salary caps, especially that new one for nurses. That's the opposite of what we should be doing.

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#168

Post by dominotw »

pjc50 wrote: post #151
dominotw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its always the same answer. People stuffing their faces with garbage food and chilling on the couch all day. Apparently there was an explosion of obesity in UK during covid. These people clog up all the available supply leaving very little for the rest. Its the same story everywhere. Ppl whine about funding, shortages ect but no one cares about if we can do something about the demand. Govt pushed covid vaccine on you…

The effects of obesity are wildly overstated, not to mention how many medical conditions it's irrelevant for. Especially in accident&emergency.

> The effects of obesity are wildly overstated

90% of health care costs are attributable to chronic disease in usa per cdc. [1]

Americans with five or more chronic conditions make up 12 percent of the population but account for 41 percent of total health care spending.

Hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes are top chronic conditions. Course of treatment for all those is "lifestyle changes" ( along with meds for managment). [2]

1. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm

2. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/tools/TL200/TL221...

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#169

Post by cpr »

swores wrote: post #136
cpr wrote: post #91

Quoted post unavailable.

Not much groupthink needed to downvote somebody who feels a single short sentence, with no citations or.. anything really, yet one that goes against current mainstream medical and scientific opinions, is worth writing. If you actually wanted to try to convince anyone that you might be even somewhere in the vicinity of having a point, you've given up before even trying and opted for pre-complaining about downvotes (so…

You're right in that I'm being lazy and shouldn't have commented without backup data. There's plenty of data out there, but why try to collect if the HN readership's thinking is so mainstream that they'll reject any such attempts out of hand?

Re: Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week

#170

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

xtracto wrote: post #124
oliwarner wrote: post #116

This isn't a collapse of emergency healthcare, it's a very predicted collapse of community social care: hospitals can't discharge if they need a care home place that doesn't exist. Without inpatient bed availability, ERs and AMUs can't admit to specialties and everything gums up at the front door. Let's be clear: we do need many more doctors and nurses, but the existing ones can't do their jobs because their wards ha…

It is too bad that corrupt government officials keep systemically defunding Social Health programs with the objective of pushing private for-profit healthcare (which just doesn't make sense). Then they point to the deficient healthcare and blame the "socialized" aspect of it for the issues. Here in Mexico we've seen it all play out: We had an amazing social healthcare system (in the form of the IMSS) in the 70s and 8…

>with the objective of pushing private for-profit healthcare (which just doesn't make sense)

Maybe it doesn't make sense for you, but it makes their buddies in the private sector a lot of money. And that's the game in capitalism, making a lot of money.

The government competing with affordable options for everyone against the private sector is "bad for business".

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