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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

#441
post #412
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that the game is to make a lot of money but the key to making that work is ensuring transactions are beneficial to all parties. It doesn't matter how you structure things you end up with some way to climb the hierarchy. The problem with pure communist systems is they try to prevent all hierarchies. Human nature attempts to circumvent this, the only way to do so is via corruption and political power. Co…

> It doesn't matter how you structure things you end up with some way to climb the hierarchy. The problem with pure communist systems is they try to prevent all hierarchies. That is a massive non-sequiter though, nobody is suggesting that factory workers rise up and sieze control of the hospitals. Or even that nurses do so. The proposals for healthcare usually involve the oligarchs being in control and the public enf…

The only reason I mentioned a pure communist system is to compare it to a pure capitalist system. I then argued that neither will solve this problem.

I agree that centralization causes huge problems.

My main point was that I don't think we've found a good system for providing hospital care and whatever that solution is I don't think it lies at either extremes of the left - right political spectrum.

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

#442

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…

This certainly makes a lot of sense, and although I am happy to believe you I am having a hard time convincing my grandma that you are right. Do you maybe have a source for your claims that would convince her? A simple news article from a reputable source would probably suffice.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o118

12-16% drop in community care bed availability https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/care-home-bed-avai...

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

State provisioned social care is not starved: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... The burden of providing social care has increasingly been transferred from individual families, to the centralized state.

Looking at cash is a poor indicator for what's actually provided.

Social care is 12-16% less available now than it was a decade ago. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/care-home-bed-avai...

On your second part, this study also shows a significant 25y fall in the number of 85yo+ who are in homes. We aren't increasingly relying on the state.

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

#444
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really going to pretend -- to this audience -- you haven't enjoyed the (yes) magical benefits of profit-seeking innovation? Progressivism conquered America a century ago. Antitrust law. Central bank. Income tax. Universal suffrage. Old age pensions. Public education, research grants. National parks. Interstate highways. Welfare, public housing. Equal opportunity employment. Disaster relief. Socialized medicin…

People are (hopefully) concerned with growing inequality, wealth centralising into small pockets of society, the lawlessness in which multinational corporate entities operate, the damage being caused to the environment by heavily promoted consumerism..

What do you mean by inequality, and how much can you accept for a machine that kills poverty?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...

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

#445

Quoted post unavailable.

Conservatives: "Government doesn't work. Elect us and we'll prove it."

Liberals: "We will fix X with policy Y"

Conservatives (-2, flagged): "All you'll do is cause Z"

Reality: X is now worse and Y had unintended consequence Z

Liberals: "Z isn't happening and anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorists anti-vax COVID denier fascist "

Liberal Fact Checkers: Headline: No, Z isn't real. Text: actually Z is real

Liberal Media: Here is why Z is a good thing

Liberals: Well, of course, there was always going to be Z dum-dum anyways we have to fix X+1 with Y+1

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State provisioned social care is not starved: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... The burden of providing social care has increasingly been transferred from individual families, to the centralized state.

Looking at cash is a poor indicator for what's actually provided. Social care is 12-16% less available now than it was a decade ago. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/care-home-bed-avai... On your second part, this study also shows a significant 25y fall in the number of 85yo+ who are in homes. We aren't increasingly relying on the state.

Saying something is starved means saying it's underfunded. The statistics show more funds being allocated to social welfare programs.

If those social welfare programs are mismanaging those funds, that's an entirely different argument than arguing it's "starved".

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

#447
post #346
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly: all kinds of promises were made for Brexit, and if they weren't delivered then those expecting them are at least disappointed, and if there was no reasonable way they could have been delivered and no real effort to deliver them, then they absolutely were deceived. How did the "£350m for the NHS" bus work out? > actually just another valid opinion Some opinions - sky is green, earth is flat - aren't val…

> Some opinions - sky is green, earth is flat - aren't valid. You just proved my point. You can’t possibly wrap your head around why someone would vote to leave the EU so clearly someone manipulated them. This is the kind of thing people said when women wanted to the right to vote - "Oh those silly women, manipulated to think that's what they want." It's dangerous thinking. I prefer to have faith that people are gene…

People who argued about the nature of democratic accountability of the EU, even though I disagreed what them, are not a group I would argue were deceived.

People who believed the UK gave the EU £350 million per week, which is the example the other poster gave, were unambiguously deceived.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been around Toronto and agree: the roads are mostly parking lots. I actually wonder if the low average speed reduces the cost of maintenance since the roadway should be less worn. But aren't tolls meant to be set high enough to discourage their use? Otherwise the average travel time on them would be about the same as the untolled route.

The 407 could likely handle 3, 4 times the capacity it holds right now. I don't know what the elasticity situation and supply/demand looks like for that highway. I can guarantee you that the owners do, and they've set it accordingly to accomplish their goals ($$). But not necessarily the goals the benefit the city. For me it's the difference between being able to work at certain employers in the west end of the GTA v…

Was the toll road utilized before the government sold it off?

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at cash is a poor indicator for what's actually provided. Social care is 12-16% less available now than it was a decade ago. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/care-home-bed-avai... On your second part, this study also shows a significant 25y fall in the number of 85yo+ who are in homes. We aren't increasingly relying on the state.

Saying something is starved means saying it's underfunded. The statistics show more funds being allocated to social welfare programs. If those social welfare programs are mismanaging those funds, that's an entirely different argument than arguing it's "starved".

Your statistics show an actual fall in the past 10 years. It's worse than that because the true picture needs to factor in local government spending now.

If we pretend there's been steady investment, and imagine stable demand, the same thing can cost more than it did before.

But irl, budgets have collapsed, demand is soaring and costs have already risen and are about to explode due to fuel-driven inflation.

So no, starved on three counts. The baseline cost is deviating from the investment. And yes, there are many, many elements to why.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives: "Government doesn't work. Elect us and we'll prove it."

Liberals: "We will fix X with policy Y" Conservatives (-2, flagged): "All you'll do is cause Z" Reality: X is now worse and Y had unintended consequence Z Liberals: "Z isn't happening and anyone who says otherwise is a conspiracy theorists anti-vax COVID denier fascist " Liberal Fact Checkers: Headline: No, Z isn't real. Text: actually Z is real Liberal Media: Here is why Z is a good thing Liberals: Well, of course,…

Sadly, this cynical take is correct in all too many cases.

The solution is to bring more intelligence to the problem of governance and human organization in general, not less. Stupidity has never been the right answer to any problem, yet it seems to be all the conservative side has to offer nowadays. Weaponizing the left side of the IQ bell curve will prove to be a bad idea in the long run.

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