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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

#351

Post by dogmatism »

Auracle wrote: post #152
nosianu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly two-thirds of adults in England are overweight or obese. That means the issue is systemic and one needs to look at things outside of individual control. Yes, often systemic issue can be overcome by individuals - by the top quartile kind of individuals with more luck, better genes, better education (including what they picked up at home while growing up), more money, more suitable lives than the majority, or…

You can both blame people and society. Modern living makes it easy to be fat, but plenty of us don’t succumb to the temptation of easy meals and overeating. I’m not sure how you’d even change modern life to get around this, save maybe for incredibly large sin taxes on everything from soda to every restaurant. I’m sure we’ll just end up with a pill sometime soon. Semaglutide comes close.

Can I introduce you to semaglutides newer, better cousin, tirzepatide? https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206038?query=TO...

50% of participants on 10 and 15mg doses lost 20% of initial body weight!

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

#352

Post by Teever »

WalterBright wrote: post #225
asdff wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand how people can simultaneously believe that governments are corrupt and the private sector would support the public's interests. Guess who is corrupting government: the private sector who only support their own interests.

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.

The driving force between market capitalism isn't selfishness Walter. It's competition.

People innately like to compete and will do so over the dumbest things, like who can get the little puck in the net with sticks the most, or who can correctly guess the sum of a pair of dice.

Market capitalism coopts this most basic of human instincts,not greed, and selfish greed is actually the root of many failures of capitalism endeavors, and human endeavors in general.

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

#353

Post by scarecrowbob »

rajup wrote: post #316
asdff wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"as long as your pockets are deep enough" Is doing a lot of work there.

In the state where I grew up, 18% of people have no health insurance at all.

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

#354

Post by gruez »

amrocha wrote: post #345
lambdadmitry wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like this kind of knee-jerk "privatisation bad, fatcat CEOs bad" reaction sadly prevalent in the UK. Let's talk about the underlying argument, shall we? Firstly, you're talking about a failure of a regulator to regulate an industry and prosecute alleged perpetrators, and the implied solution is to… nationalise the industry, somehow assuming the nationalised entity will be managed better by the very sam…

How can you look at horrible evil companies literally destroying the environment around us just because it makes them more money and say there's no alternative??? If you need a regulator to make sure companies don't literally dump sewage all over the country then it's pretty clear that this is a failed system with bad incentives. What pressures would a nationalized system have? How about the fact that normal people d…

>What pressures would a nationalized system have? How about the fact that normal people don't want to ruin the environment around them? You don't need additional pressure to make sure that doesn't happen.

Elsewhere in this thread people are literally talking about nationalized healthcare systems where people are waiting hours for ambulances, or dying in hospital waiting rooms. I think the statement of "normal people don't want to ruin the environment around them" is applicable to the people working in those healthcare systems, yet it's still apparently happening.

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

#355

Post by lambdadmitry »

amrocha wrote: post #345
lambdadmitry wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like this kind of knee-jerk "privatisation bad, fatcat CEOs bad" reaction sadly prevalent in the UK. Let's talk about the underlying argument, shall we? Firstly, you're talking about a failure of a regulator to regulate an industry and prosecute alleged perpetrators, and the implied solution is to… nationalise the industry, somehow assuming the nationalised entity will be managed better by the very sam…

How can you look at horrible evil companies literally destroying the environment around us just because it makes them more money and say there's no alternative??? If you need a regulator to make sure companies don't literally dump sewage all over the country then it's pretty clear that this is a failed system with bad incentives. What pressures would a nationalized system have? How about the fact that normal people d…

Because I'm well aware of horrible evil governments doing exactly the same. Norilsk became what it is now under Soviets, which were not keen on private enterprises. Pollution is more or less orthogonal to the form of ownership.

No, the problem does not go away. You start optimising for short term political goals (see also: ongoing property debt crisis in China), and minimising short-term drama (see also: regulatory capture by unions). Sometimes you also start implementing insane projects just because your glorious leader decided to do them and cost/value is not an issue (see also: Chinese war on sparrows). Sometimes you just minimise the expense and make everyone disagreeing with you shut up, because they don't have a choice either way (see also: Chernobyl not having containment). You also get way less feedback, because you're spending someone else's money (i.e., taxpayers'). So no, "government consists of decent people and they won't optimise for the short term even though they are doing it now because there'll be no commercial company controlling it" is a very optimistic take at most and definitely not a realistic one.

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

#356

Post by WalterBright »

trs8080 wrote: post #344
relativ575 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how on that list none of South America countries appear after 1990s? Venezuela has been hostile to the US, yet they are still there. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia have elected socialism-leaning governments multiple times during the last 30 years. Not to mention Nicaragua or Mexico, that are not considered South America. Colombia is the latest example. So they are poor because of US meddling,…

> Notice how on that list none of South America countries appear after 1990s? This is regime change /that we know about/. Intelligence agencies haven't made a huge habit of discussing their covert successes. > Venezuela has been hostile to the US, yet they are still there. Yes, because the international response would be quite severe if the US decided to what - destroy Venezuela? Foreign occupations and coups decimat…

> that we know about

I.e. there's no evidence.

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

#357

Post by magicalist »

Scoundreller wrote: post #302
magicalist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nurses are leaving a ton of places in the US for better pay elsewhere, too.

They're not leaving the US, they're re-allocating themselves internally.

Yes, and the places they're leaving are experiencing major service delays and cancellations. I'm not sure of your point?

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

#358

Post by mensetmanusman »

oliwarner wrote: post #294
lotsofpulp wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Areas with poor, old populations can never pay their way. The root of the issue is that this area is now the country. Giving all old people the labor necessary to support them in old age was easier when the ratio of working people to non working people was much higher, in conjunction with old people not living as long. Turn that population pyramid upside down due to drastically reduced birthrates and medical technol…

You say that like it's an imperative but it's not. This is a choice. Through the government we elected, we choose to starve social care. We choose to starve education and so many other public services. Yes, our age profile made it more expensive, but so what? We choose to underfund it.

If everyone is taking care of the elderly there is no one left to generate the wealth that props up society.

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

#359

Post by WalterBright »

trs8080 wrote: post #274
WalterBright wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually they remain mired in poverty largely because the US keeps meddling in their affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... So it's more like "they remain mired in poverty because of the United States' predilection for predatory capitalism."

How about this:

"Argentina’s Long Road to Ruin A century’s worth of corruption and leftist politics devastated this once-rich nation."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/argentinas-long-road-to-ruin-hy...

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

#360

Post by missedthecue »

amrocha wrote: post #345
lambdadmitry wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like this kind of knee-jerk "privatisation bad, fatcat CEOs bad" reaction sadly prevalent in the UK. Let's talk about the underlying argument, shall we? Firstly, you're talking about a failure of a regulator to regulate an industry and prosecute alleged perpetrators, and the implied solution is to… nationalise the industry, somehow assuming the nationalised entity will be managed better by the very sam…

How can you look at horrible evil companies literally destroying the environment around us just because it makes them more money and say there's no alternative??? If you need a regulator to make sure companies don't literally dump sewage all over the country then it's pretty clear that this is a failed system with bad incentives. What pressures would a nationalized system have? How about the fact that normal people d…

"How can you look at horrible evil companies literally destroying the environment around us just because it makes them more money and say there's no alternative?"

I guess for me I just don't understand how nationalising a given company makes it stop emitting carbon.

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