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Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
201–210 of 429 posts
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this is a common and totally unjustified take. The NHS is fairly frequently subject to alteration and reform in various ways, and there is no real truth to the “piles of bureaucracy and waste” stories - it remains broadly pretty efficient as a healthcare system when compared with other developed countries. You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK - this is almost universally not a…
> You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK I mentioned that we don't have the right to opt out of paying for the NHS. It's not possible go entirely private. If you could opt out, you could pay that money to a private provider instead and entirely forego the use of the NHS. That isn't an option today. But it should be.
And when you have a heart attack in the street, who's responding?
In this scenario, why should an NHS ambulance pick you up when you don't contribute? Surely it should prioritize those on public healthcare? Some poor lad whose leg is broken from a fall?
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in a US city with a metropolitan population of about 600,000. The largest provider in town is a university hospital with a sprawling set of clinics that employs 1850 physicians and 21,000 staff. I have pay for insurance that provides the best coverage in my area. Last September I asked for an appointment with my GP before the end of the year. The first appointment was on January 3. I took the appointment. In O…
This doesn't seem all that realistic - that's pretty surprising that they were willing to quote a price for the test ahead of time.
Apparently they do this so that people aren't surprised at the magnitude of the bill. Last September I got a covid test at the same place as I had symptoms and was just about to travel. They didn't provide an estimate at that time, but looking at my insurance statement, I see they billed $394.35. The negotiated rate meant that the provider was paid $184.98.
Looking back at my past estimates, I see that in 2015 the estimate for the MRI ordered by an ENT that was diagnosing hearing loss was $11,427. In Canada, apparently a private MRI would cost $1,000 or less [1]. I bet the fact that they are available for free for those willing to wait a bit longer helps keep the cost down. If I was given the choice of paying $500 or waiting a few more months for free, I would have definitely taken the free option because I had already delayed care on this for over 10 years.
1. https://www.olympiabenefits.com/blog/how-much-does-a-private...
My wife works with people that are undergoing cancer treatment. One of them is single and lacks FU money in her bank account. She needs to carefully manage the 20 weeks of unpaid leave available to her (and a couple weeks of paid sick leave and vacation) so that she doesn't lose her job. While COBRA could provide continuation of benefits at her current level, that is quite expensive. The Affordable Care Act would give her a path to affordable insurance, but her recent salary would seem to put her out of the running for a full subsidy. Switching insurance in the midst of treatment could mean switching providers. Surely switching providers from one of the best in the area (which is open to Medicare) to someone else while in the midst of cancer treatment is not ideal.
Per the Canada MRI pricing, a private option can be an empowering alternative. A high-quality public option is needed to keep the private options in check and to provide a base level of care for those that are not lucky enough to be able to afford private insurance and private care. Even then, surely there are horror stories.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two wrongs do not make a right. I’d wager the people upset about the Tories are not by and large enamoured with Tony Blair’s New Labour either.
You would think that but a lot of people can't see beyond its the Tories in power. We'd be better off with proportional representation but the beeb did an excellent job at mis-selling that to the masses
It is frustrating to see the country getting polarised this way. A 2-party system is not helpful to a functioning democracy. I am not a fan of fully proportional representation as it leads to government instability and ineffectiveness, but a party getting an absolute majority in Parliament whilst getting 40% of the vote is a travesty. Also, after having lived through Brexit and the successive government, the BBC is not fit for purpose. It is fine as a public media group, but it’s sanctity in the mind of a lot of British people is not really well founded.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you so sure government bureaucracy is even capable of doing this? It never had a great track record to begin with.
I don't wish to be snarky, but you are aware that the NHS as an institution has existed since the late 1940's and has been working reasonably well for a long time? An institution does not become beloved by the public for failing to provide a good standard of care for a long enough time that people become used to it doing so. So when you say: > It never had a great track record to begin with. Are you talking about gov…
I think general survey results are probably a poor metric to use in evaluating the success of a healthcare institution. Sure, at any point in time, most people should be able to get what they need, but the serious cases, or anything out of the ordinary, is a much smaller percentage of cases for any given year. Anecdotes of waiting lists and the rationing of care (e.g. delaying services to the start of the next fiscal year when new money gets distributed) have been notorious for years now. This dissatisfaction only reveals itself over time, where it personally affects a greater swathe of the people. The pandemic accerlated this, but it shows how ultimately unsustainable it is.
Healhchare is tricky, because treatments are not one-size-fits-all. Large institutions are rigidly setup to deliver a product, a product that is ever changing, as new treatments are always being refined and added. When it was created it was set up to deliver products that were new 50 years ago, but the structure is inherently slow to evolve. But the private health insurance in UK does not have these problems. More effort could be made at growing the economy in such a way that rising incomes allow people to purchase the private health insurance. It's not an immediate answer for many, but it definitely beats throwing more money at a bureaucracy that cannot adapt.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this is a common and totally unjustified take. The NHS is fairly frequently subject to alteration and reform in various ways, and there is no real truth to the “piles of bureaucracy and waste” stories - it remains broadly pretty efficient as a healthcare system when compared with other developed countries. You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK - this is almost universally not a…
> You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK I mentioned that we don't have the right to opt out of paying for the NHS. It's not possible go entirely private. If you could opt out, you could pay that money to a private provider instead and entirely forego the use of the NHS. That isn't an option today. But it should be.
Why do you think this should be an option?
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#207> If the current trajectory continues, the number of non-Covid excess deaths will soon outstrip deaths from the virus this year – and be even more deadly than the omicron wave. I have friends in the UK and the USA who all during the pandemic were asking, what about the unintended consequences? Where are the models for the impact of these decisions? What are the numbers of collateral damage? There were no answers. Any…
What unintended consequences are we talking about here? The problems in the article don't stem from lockdowns, they stem from delays caused by capacity problems in the healthcare system. So, if anything, the article describes the unintended consequences of those who deliberately kept fighting all measures to curb the spread of COVID.
> So what is going on? Experts believe decisions taken by the Government in the earliest stages of the pandemic may now be coming back to bite.
Policies that kept people indoors, scared them away from hospitals and deprived them of treatment and primary care are finally taking their toll.
That's in the first couple of lines. Those sounds unintended. Those are resulting in collateral damage.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the (UK) left is the party of the political managerial class, what is the (UK) right? When I'm feeling particularly sarcastic I might call them the party of dilettantes, but is that apt?
Oddly, things kind of flipped around (in very broad terms). The left is where some of the well-off urban middle classes are, along with the far-left socialists. The right is where the less well off but working are, along with some non-urban upper- and middle-class voters. Because for a lot of working class people (primarily those who work, and aren't living off state support), they have been entirely abandoned by Lab…
Agree. As I once had it explained to me, "I don't choose parties any more, I just use my best guess as to which one will mean I take home more of my salary".
There's also the European angle. Those who want to work likely faced competition from EU workers and generally feel hard done by when it comes to globalisation. After all, if you worked in coal, steel, car manufacturing or your family did, quite likely you, or a relative, has lost a good portion of that work to cheaper manufacturing abroad. Which is more appealing: Labour, who prevaricated on Brexit, or BoJo, who simply said he'd do it? It isn't all that different to 'America First' in its appeal.
There probably wasn't any way to avoid the demise of coal, especially given our need to combat climate change, but did Labour provide an alternative? During the 2000s, Labour massively expanded higher education but also increased 'student debt', and only paid lip service to apprenticeships. If you're working class and working/aspirational, likely your budgeting is quite strict. Things like 'debt' and 'loans' generally mean 'trouble' and not a solution.
I agree this is broad strokes, but Labour has a problem in that it no longer actually represents its traditional demographic.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people only need to look across to Europe That would be politically risky these days… The UK needs to come back to Earth before this happens.
It's the EU that arguably needs to come back to earth, by returning to a trading bloc, rather than a halfway house pan-european state. The shared monetary system with no shared fiscal policy will come apart one day, as it nearly did with the Greek sovereign debt crisis.
> It's the EU that arguably needs to come back to earth, by returning to a trading bloc, rather than a halfway house pan-european state.
This old chestnut. Go read the Rome treaty or the Schuman declaration. The “it’s only economic” is a lie you’ve been sold by your own governments. The aim has always been political Union, from the beginning.
Besides, the EU being “a trading bloc” would not solve any of the issues facing the British government, which mostly result from the government having mutually exclusive demands and being unwilling to keep its word and following the agreements it signed. Including on imports and exports, which is the essence of a trading bloc and would not be improved one bit of the EU were only one of those.
Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it possible that demographics have changed enough that funding requirements have changed enough that the 1940s-2000 or so system is no longer viable? I know the demographics in the US has vastly changed some cost models over that time, making some earlier social program hit major funding problems through no evil from govt actors.
The demographics have changed, but they take that into account in terms of how they handle and manage care. There's a lot of thinking and work that goes on to cover working out the changing needs of your population that has to be handled by any well managed healthcare service. In the NHS specifically I am aware that they also have change management procedures that exist to try and understand how to provide continuous…
One common complaint from doctors (at least, in the U.S.) is the need to hover over a laptop all the time that takes time away from talking to the patient. A big problem as I've heard of a number of doctors retiring early because they don't feel as though they are even treating patients anymore, they are slaves to a console. (And these are not old doctors nearing retirement anyway.)
Personally, I think we've become a little too tech obsessed in thinking every problem can be solved with IT. Digitizing records only feeds a surveillance state anyway and can be dangerous (for other, obvious, reasons).