31–40 of 42 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems quite a claim from one datapoint...
Ah, more of a joke on your datapoint. And the traditional British practice of retiring to more southern locations in Europe.
FWIW, I retired to the coast in the NW, I have a beach on one side of the house and a park on the other. It's pretty nice :)
Even up here in the NW though, it's been too damn hot recently...
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> The NHS is struggling because we have an unhealthy population I think we should stop pretending the NHS doesn't have quality and availability issues, which are validly pointed out in the OP article. I was shocked to discover that the NHS is paying out £60bn in compensation: https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2211 Some of that seems to be claims inflation, but it also has to indicate a very real problem. The NHS r…
The problem with changing the 'free at the point of use' principle is that under any likely replacement it would continue to be free for expectant mothers, children, the disabled, and the elderly - precisely the people who consume the largest proportion of healthcare resources. And that means that introducing per-appointment charges would likely have only a very minor effect on reducing waste & improving availability…
The disabled were scapegoated for much of my teens, I wouldn't be surprised if that continues; the elderly… I won't be surprised if someone realises an old person who needs treatment to live, doesn't get it, dies, isn't going to vote against the party responsible for that in the next election the way a pensioner whose income doesn't rise with the cost of living will be able to.
Mothers and children are still going to be important to look after. But with ever-decreasing fertility rates, I wonder if this has become much cheaper per capita already, and the "true" (steady-state) cost for this part of the NHS is therefore hidden, just as old-age care costs were hidden when the population pyramid was the old shape?
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Very different economy from the rest of that list. Economically it's like an Ireland (high tech and services) that spends 8% of its economy on war. And receives significant foreign aid.
US foreign aid received per capita is about $300 - against a GDP per capita of about $70,000. (On the US side the aid sent is $10 per capita per year).
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The problem with changing the 'free at the point of use' principle is that under any likely replacement it would continue to be free for expectant mothers, children, the disabled, and the elderly - precisely the people who consume the largest proportion of healthcare resources. And that means that introducing per-appointment charges would likely have only a very minor effect on reducing waste & improving availability…
i think instead of asking the best way of dividing the costs, we should ask why does it cost so much. we've managed to bring down immensely the cost of technology over the past decades everywhere else.
That said, I do hear people sometimes complaining that the administrators were fired to save money, and this just put all that administrative burden onto the doctors and nurses who weren't trained in it and didn't go into medicine to perform; if that's true, tech may be able to assist with reducing that burden?
I generally agree with the article but there are a couple of issues. >France has roughly the same population as the U.K., but almost 50 percent more homes. France also has four times the land area compared to the UK. >The Economist ties Britain’s energy scarcity to its overly rapid and haphazard push for decarbonization; having banned coal, and with natural gas now extremely expensive due to the Ukraine war, the UK h…
This is not by itself of great importance.
There's several different meanings of "built on", but even with the most expansive definition for this purpose, the UK could double how much is "built on" at a cost of around a tenth of what isn't: https://fullfact.org/economy/has-92-country-not-been-built/
There's other reasons to say "perhaps not a good idea" to a higher population (food security, energy security), but the land is there for more (or simply bigger) housing.
I generally agree with the article but there are a couple of issues. >France has roughly the same population as the U.K., but almost 50 percent more homes. France also has four times the land area compared to the UK. >The Economist ties Britain’s energy scarcity to its overly rapid and haphazard push for decarbonization; having banned coal, and with natural gas now extremely expensive due to the Ukraine war, the UK h…
> The NHS is struggling because we have an unhealthy population I think we should stop pretending the NHS doesn't have quality and availability issues, which are validly pointed out in the OP article. I was shocked to discover that the NHS is paying out £60bn in compensation: https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2211 Some of that seems to be claims inflation, but it also has to indicate a very real problem. The NHS r…
I don't think anybody is pretending it doesn't. We just need to ask why it has got so bad since Covid and why we seem to be struggling more than similar European countries.
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Counter-cyclic fiscal policy and QE does work, absolutely, but it's likely dependent on size of economy because in most cases austerity works better...but in most cases the economies are much smaller than America's; Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Greece (since austerity was forced upon it), HK, Britain could likely've been more austere during the GFC and seen more growth. Then again although not comparab…
I thought austerity failed every time it was tried. When didn't it fail?
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US foreign aid received per capita is about $300 - against a GDP per capita of about $70,000. (On the US side the aid sent is $10 per capita per year).
Is that including all the money the US sends them for the war or is it only the money tagged as foreign aid?
From what I found there was a one-off increase in 2024 due to the war, and a special payment in 2022 for the Iron Dome.
Averaging over the past 5 years, and including those special payments, it’s still $574 per Israeli per year. (And about $17 per American).
Compared to respective GDPs per capita of $70k and $95k.
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i think instead of asking the best way of dividing the costs, we should ask why does it cost so much. we've managed to bring down immensely the cost of technology over the past decades everywhere else.
Baumol effect is my best guess. Nursing tracks the cost of labour, the tech is (so far) making a small fraction of the worldload a lot more efficient, but the bulk of the workload is not (yet) amenable to automation. That said, I do hear people sometimes complaining that the administrators were fired to save money, and this just put all that administrative burden onto the doctors and nurses who weren't trained in it…
But, actually, some of the tech programmes from the past decade have been effective - NHS Digital & NHSX, the NHS Spine, the work that's led to the Single Patient Record. All much smaller, simpler, and more agile than the gigantic, nightmarish NPfIT money pit of the 2000s. The post-Covid reorg, putting everything under NHS England, inevitably killed some of the momentum but there was real value created and people are doing their best to learn from the experience.
As you say, labour is the real cost driver - but a lot of that labour ought to be done under the banner of Social Care rather than the NHS. Of course, fixing Social Care isn't exactly simple, and will become almost impossible should the nativist right succeed in slashing the supply of care workers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counter-cyclic fiscal policy and QE does work, absolutely, but it's likely dependent on size of economy because in most cases austerity works better...but in most cases the economies are much smaller than America's; Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Greece (since austerity was forced upon it), HK, Britain could likely've been more austere during the GFC and seen more growth. Then again although not comparab…
I thought austerity failed every time it was tried. When didn't it fail?
HK under JJ Cowperthwaite (1961 to 1971), but more generally since then and especially pre '97.