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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

#311

Post by anigbrowl »

WalterBright wrote: post #227
asdff wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can people benefit when in the free market system consumers are seen as a resource to be exploited?

Because the seller, in a free market, has to please is customer. The way to please the customer is to have the customer benefit from the transaction. For example, how long do you think McDonald's would last if its McBurgers tasted bad? McDonald's success is extremely tied to customer satisfaction. Tossing the ball back to you, under socialism, why would the socialist service care if you're pleased with the service or…

McDonalds is able to sell garbage food because most Americans are addicted to sugar. Your free-market evangelism is the economic equivalent of their junk food.

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

#312

Post by asdff »

WalterBright wrote: post #254
asdff wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a socialist system is ran by the public. It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Mcdonalds needs to taste tasty, but only to get you hooked enough to choose mcdonalds over other foods. You think the shareholders would rather their customers actually eat healthy which means limiting consumption of Mcdonalds? No, they are practically in the business of selling cigarettes but in the form of fats and su…

> It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Every country that tried having the government run food production produced starvation. Every one. > The goal of the capitalist isn't to make their customer happy, its to extract as much of their available disposable income as possible. True, but the way to get that money is to please the customer, because the company cannot force them to buy.

Pleasing the customer is not always good for the customer. I'm sure nicotine addicts get a lot of pleasure from smoking a pack a day. In fact i think that is still Newport's slogan.

Plus your quip is a little bit dated honestly. The soviets had famines because they literally didn't support evolution for quite some time. They believed Lysenko and allowed him to execute his critics. Meanwhile today, look at China the past few decades when modern agricultural practices were finally well established around the world. Another 600 million people in 50 years. Huge population growth doesn't happen because of starvation.

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

#313

Post by anigbrowl »

WalterBright wrote: post #254
asdff wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a socialist system is ran by the public. It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Mcdonalds needs to taste tasty, but only to get you hooked enough to choose mcdonalds over other foods. You think the shareholders would rather their customers actually eat healthy which means limiting consumption of Mcdonalds? No, they are practically in the business of selling cigarettes but in the form of fats and su…

> It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Every country that tried having the government run food production produced starvation. Every one. > The goal of the capitalist isn't to make their customer happy, its to extract as much of their available disposable income as possible. True, but the way to get that money is to please the customer, because the company cannot force them to buy.

Every country that tried having the government run food production produced starvation.

Those goalposts were just fine where they were, put them back and address the actual argument. Nobody was advocating for 'government run food production'.

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

#314

Post by redeeman »

asdff wrote: post #226
WalterBright wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is difficult to understand how it works, but the beauty of the free market is everyone benefits while selfishly working for their own self-interest. Socialism, however, requires altruistic behavior, and very few people are consistently altruistic and self-sacrificing for the common good.

How can people benefit when in the free market system consumers are seen as a resource to be exploited?

it works like this. In a free market, you dont have to buy my services, but you will if it is better for you on the whole than not. I may consider you cattle to be exploited for profit, but you probably wont just give me your money if i try to sell you my grass offcuttings for $10k. If i somehow come up with a way to produce a great lawnmower that costs me $1 to make, and I sell it to you for $100, you would perhaps think this is a great thing, while I make out like a troll. win/win. If I offer you a shitty lawnmower for $100k, you simply decline.

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

#315

Post by wernercd »

asdff wrote: post #244
WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the seller, in a free market, has to please is customer. The way to please the customer is to have the customer benefit from the transaction. For example, how long do you think McDonald's would last if its McBurgers tasted bad? McDonald's success is extremely tied to customer satisfaction. Tossing the ball back to you, under socialism, why would the socialist service care if you're pleased with the service or…

Because a socialist system is ran by the public. It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Mcdonalds needs to taste tasty, but only to get you hooked enough to choose mcdonalds over other foods. You think the shareholders would rather their customers actually eat healthy which means limiting consumption of Mcdonalds? No, they are practically in the business of selling cigarettes but in the form of fats and su…

"ran by the public"

lol you misspelled "ran by corrupt authoritarian governments that don't give 2 shits about the public unless they can exploit them"

You can ding corporations... but the real world socialist examples are worse.

Corporations aren't perfect (and we don't live in pure capitalism anyways. Common sense controls exist for good reason). But they are better than socialist governments.

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

#316

Post by rajup »

asdff wrote: post #220
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #199

My 80 year old grandfather was due for a knee operation and it was delayed twice. On the day after the second time it was delayed, his knee collapsed and he smacked his head on the concrete floor. His speech was slurred, his vision was affected, and he was in extreme pain. Bearing in mind in his younger years he's had eyes slashed open and fingers cut off, so he has a high pain threshold. The ambulance took six hours…

As someone in the U.S., don't expect the timeliness to improve any with private healthcare.

Why do you say that, do you have any evidence to back it up? Not saying the US healthcare system is anything to write home about, but it always seemed to me that as long as your pockets are deep enough you should be able to get healthcare when you need it in the US.

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

#317

Post by aaron695 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#318

Post by mellosouls »

mattlondon wrote: post #234

As a UK tax payer, and as a UK tax payer that winces every time they see how much they lose to taxation in their P60 each year (six figures in tax), what are people's solutions to this? It seems like the NHS budget keeps on going up and up and up [1], as does the number of doctors and nurses (while "managers" has either declined or stayed relatively static) [2]. So NHS is getting more funding, and there are more doct…

There are potential answers to your questions in other comments in this discussion that have been there for hours, it might be more useful to move understanding forward to address them rather than just opening a new thread as though they aren't there...

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

#319

Post by TillE »

pjc50 wrote: post #150
DanBC wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years people have been raising the warning about the pressures on healthcare system, and for years the conservative party have asked the NHS to do more with less. What does collapse look like? Well, in the early days, it looks very gentle. The four hour wait for ED treatment goes up a bit. Healthcare people say "Look! This is concerning!" and politicians say "eh, it's just winter pressure, we know things are roug…

As we've learned from COVID, it doesn't matter what casualties the system inflicts if the press aren't willing to see it like that.

This is especially true in the UK, but I think the surprisingly under-appreciated, under-explored fact of western democracies for the past 50+ years is that ultimate power truly lies with the mainstream press and what they're willing to cover, and whose politics they're willing to tolerate.

There is no institution more powerful in shaping the minds of the public, and they do very frequently act as a monolith, especially in the UK.

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

#320

Post by fractallyte »

WalterBright wrote: post #242
MichaelCollins wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet Union accrued massive debt due to internal production inefficiencies caused by corruption and mismanagement. Russia has extraordinary natural resources, by all rights they should be one of the most wealthy countries on earth.

The same goes for South America. Yet they remain mired in poverty thanks to their predilection for socialism.

Much of that poverty has its roots way back in the time of the Conquistadors and the generations of Spanish and Portuguese families that looted the riches of the Inca empire.

The descendants of those families still have huge wealth and influence in South America.

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