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Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

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Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#281

Post by koshergweilo »

simonh wrote: post #226
rleigh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I have private health care through my employer, I've only used it once but it was very handy. I don't agree with your take at all, there's no way a private health care outfit could efficiently provide an effective emergency service across the entire UK for all possible injuries and illnesses, completely replacing or duplicating the NHS. The USA has tried this and it's an incredibly expensive disaster. Employed middle…

Yup, as an American this is a pretty accurate assessment for the most part. It's also worth noting that several states actually have different systems to close the gap for people who don't fit into the medicare-medicaid-chips safety nets. In California we have medical, which adds an extra tax, but does help a lot of people who would be uninsured get health insurance. Different states will have massively different levels of care and expertise available.

For what it's worth if you have the money you can get some pretty world class care here. My dad had cancer and due to my mom's really good (publicly provided mind you, she worked for the school system) insurance got my dad great care and he's still out an about to this day

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#282

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

inglor_cz wrote: post #147
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they spend slightly more than double what they did in 1955, when the cost of providing healthcare has gone up nearly 4x due to the Beaumol effect. That doesn't seem good? You'd expect the service to gradually get worse in that case, wouldn't you? https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/wh...

"worse" in what sense? Outcomes of serious diseases are probably better in 1955, because science hasn't stood still.

I dunno, people are WAY fatter now. I wouldn't be surprised if it evens out.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#283

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #244
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we really did import a lot of skilled labour and did not train enough of our own people.

Domestic people were not discriminated against from training. Birthrates went down, so supply of labor decreases, so prices have to increase to attract more people to do the desired type of labor. Or if the country is desirable enough, the country can open up immigration to increase supply of labor and keep prices lower than if they had kept immigration closed. Domestic labor can keep moving onto more desirable jobs…

Yes, that's a fair point.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#284

Post by uwagar »

julianlam wrote: post #42
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #23

Wouldn’t a reasonable hypothesis try to rule out the vaccine? I’m not anti vaccine, I received the vaccine. But if excess death is creeping and it’s not Covid, would t that be one of the first things to rule out? They don’t even indicate that was ruled out, just completely ignored.

Why jump to it when simpler explanations exist? Delays in diagnosis or no diagnosis at all is likely a more fitting explanation.

[flagged]

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#285

Post by ayngg »

pharmakom wrote: post #214
jeromegv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have actively worked at crippling it. Now that it’s crippled they tell you.. oh but surely the government can’t fix it, we need private enterprises to fix it! You walked right into it. What makes you think private business are capable of delivering something cheaper than what the government can do? The most expensive health care in the world is private.

This makes me wonder… if Conservative strategy is to run it into the ground and then privatise, which is an unpopular plan with the public, then how are they able to consistently win elections?

It is more nuanced than that. The issue is that a lot of western societies are falling into debt traps because of a lot of social and economic factors which are already straining these systems to the point that they cant keep up, and the conservative strategy (in my good faith interpretation) regarding this is reducing the cost of programs that they consider to be bloated. This can be interpreted as running it into the ground as the bloat is often in bureaucracy which can easily pass the buck to actual service providers which then suffer from lack of funding. In contrast a more liberal solution would likely involve increasing spending then trying to recover that through additional taxes, which conservatives would say doesn't solve the cost problem but rather exacerbates it since bloat remains and is paid for by more debt or taxes. Of course this is just a general simplification of the conflict.

Clearly the solution is probably somewhere in between, but political polarization has simply pushed people to their party lines and entrenched their positions such that no real progress can happen while things continue to fall apart.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#286

Post by MagnumOpus »

cirrus-clouds wrote: post #164
origin_path wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what lots of people want - I can assure you, I know quite a few - but the British left attacks anyone so viciously and nastily that they aren't ever going to admit it to anyone seen in the vicinity of a Guardian. The NHS has collapsed since COVID. No, it isn't due to lack of funding, that's a lie. NHS funding has increased massively under the Conservatives who haven't talked about even limited privatisation fo…

NHS funding has increased massively under the Conservatives That is simply not true. The Conservatives came to power in 2010. Here's what the The King's Fund [1] has to say on funding: "In the decade following the global financial crisis in 2008, the health service faced the most prolonged spending squeeze in its history: between 2009/10 and 2018/19 health spending increased by an average of just 1.5% per year in rea…

To put that 1.5% annual real-terms budget increase into context:

In the same decade the proportion of people aged 65+ increased from 16% to 22%ish of the population, an increase of a third. Since these are the people who consume the vast majority of NHS resource, the actual age-adjusted funding has been shrinking steadily every year.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#287

Post by jotm »

jajahusjsna wrote: post #8

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. - Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for t…

I'll just say that it's still better than the German system.

Same ridiculous waiting times for a 50/50 chance to just get a paracetamol prescription.

Private is expensive as hell, nonexistent or not usable.

Mental healthcare? Pay us, fuck you.

Medication newer than 30 years? Stop huffing that ibuprofen, Bruder.

But it's defended to death by the German Internet Chairforce, so it's got that going for it.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#289

Post by jotm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #156
heurisko wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has been spending less on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than comparable European countries, Germany and France. I agree more money doesn't solve the issue, especially as so much money was wasted on Covid testing and private beds that were never used. However in my lifetime the difference in healthcare spending between New Labour and Conservative has been noticeable. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.…

As a counterpoint, this is the same graph, but with the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway chosen instead of Germany and France. All nice developed rich northern European countries with reasonable life expectancy and life quality. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2... Their difference from the UK is negligible.

Belgium's system works way better than the Netherlands (or Germany's, both are very similar) btw. It's pretty good.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#290

Post by MagnumOpus »

benj111 wrote: post #154
origin_path wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what lots of people want - I can assure you, I know quite a few - but the British left attacks anyone so viciously and nastily that they aren't ever going to admit it to anyone seen in the vicinity of a Guardian. The NHS has collapsed since COVID. No, it isn't due to lack of funding, that's a lie. NHS funding has increased massively under the Conservatives who haven't talked about even limited privatisation fo…

Waiting lists are going down. They just cleared the backlog of people waiting 3 years for treatment

Sure, and the excess deaths above help a lot in doing that.

Still, while waiting for patients to die is an cheap way to shorten backlogs, it does leave not instill confidence…

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