71–80 of 96 posts
Which country has the best health care in Europe? And what makes it the best solution? I ask from the perspective of an American, with access to great health care but it’s expensive. If we were going to reinvent health care here, who should we copy?
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Well, it is underfunded [1]. The UK spends a lot less per capita than any other developed nation. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326
Your study doesn't actually say that. You'd expect their comparison to be with other developed countries given how it's worded, but in reality: The UK had the lowest healthcare expenditure per capita relative to our comparator countries (UK, $3825 (£2972; €3392); study average, $5700), although this was roughly in line with the average healthcare expenditure of the OECD member states ($3854) and the EU member states…
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Yep. It's political suicide to bring up fairly obvious age/prognosis limits, but ultimately we all die of something. Assuming most disease based hospital stays (heart attacks strokes, cancers) are biased towards older folk it makes sense that resources to younger folk be prioritised. It makes -sense-, but asking a decent human to turf an "old person" out of bed because a "young person" has arrived (with a survivable,…
There is no need to kick anyone out of bed. You can adjust policy. For example no lockdowns, that sacrificed young people over old. I still have bad health from that. My daughter has developmental issues. And overweight people should not have publicly founded insurance. We should respect their wish to die! And no publicly founded health insurance for non-citizens. That even has strong political support!
"And overweight people should not have publicly founded insurance. We should respect their wish to die!"
Overweight people don't want to die. Obviously you know this but were trying to make some point, one I don't understand.
I think it’s amazing that a solid system can be defunded like that until it just sorta crumbles under it’s own weight. There’s no immediate solution either. If you build more hospitals, you need more staff, if you need more staff, you need to make it more attractive, but even if you do you need several years before the first doctors/nurses from the wave with renewed interest in the position finishes university. And t…
>I think it’s amazing that a solid system can be defunded like that until it just sorta crumbles under it’s own weight "defunded"? Maybe if you're comparing post pandemic budgets to pandemic budgets, but spending is still way up compared to pre-pandemic levels. [1] https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12020081/embed?auto=1
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I live in a mid sized urban area, a few blocks from a large hospital. My location was certainly beneficial when I needed emergency treatment. But for anything non-emergency, the waiting lists and "pre approval" battle are appalling. My spouse, who lives in the same house, but has a different employer, gets much quicker treatment from the same clinics.
How is this? All other things equal, certain companies simply get to jump the line over others?
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> Blair’s Labour—for all their faults—at least stopped the bleeding, Stopped the figurative bleeding and started the literal... But by stopped the bleeding, do you mean kept at levels comparable to those set by the previous conservative government? I.e., agreeing with the level of funding set by the conservative government. I find it weird how governments are given a pass in that way. Setting funding from X to Y is a…
Labour under Blair significantly increased the spending on the NHS compared to the conservative government before them.
Looks like there has been no slashing going on, even adjusted for inflation and demographics. And the conservative governments after 2010 kept funding at about the same levels as the Labour governments set it at. Fancy that.
I wonder what governments have had to show for this massive 2x increase in adjusted healthcare spending. Vast improvements to the system, surely.
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Your study doesn't actually say that. You'd expect their comparison to be with other developed countries given how it's worded, but in reality: The UK had the lowest healthcare expenditure per capita relative to our comparator countries (UK, $3825 (£2972; €3392); study average, $5700), although this was roughly in line with the average healthcare expenditure of the OECD member states ($3854) and the EU member states…
Thanks, must read my sources more carefully! Still second lowest in G7 though.
There are still big sources of error in these numbers. It's not obvious, but spending on IT systems and hospitals (capital investment) isn't included in these numbers, yet these have sucked up a lot of NHS spending over time especially in the form of large failed IT projects, and capital expenditure on hospital buildings has often been done "off the books" in the UK using PFI schemes.
Unfortunately the ideological basis of the NHS means that many people feel a nearly moral obligation to argue its failings are always about money, especially Brits who work in the healthcare world themselves. It's a risk free strategy. To criticize the way the NHS is actually structured or operates would come dangerously close to wrongthink.
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Explain how Japan has the #2 best healthcare system in the world then. (It’s universal with 70% of costs paid by the government)
Strong planning and hard decisions. Japan over produces doctors. Japan forces a strict 30minute cap on doctor visits when billed by that insurance. Japan limits hospitals to be only owned by doctors, not corporations. Japan has no medical malpractice lawsuits. Japan makes everyone pay 30% of medical costs, UpTo a cap of about 1k dollars per month. There is no such thing as the "nice" health care insurance nearly ever…
That’s why I questioned the idea that demographic issues are going to prevent the West from solving this problem. A little bit of political will and some signatures is all it takes.
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Explain how Japan has the #2 best healthcare system in the world then. (It’s universal with 70% of costs paid by the government)
I don’t like “exceptionalism” arguments in general, and I think “muh homogeneity” is bunk as well, but Japan has a very strong and unique culture that results in outcomes that the rest of the world would not see in the same conditions. See for example Japan having very few public trash cans but also very low amounts of litter, or even very low wage workers taking pride in their jobs, or Japan having both extremely lo…
These examples heavily downplay the public health, safety, and behavior progress the West has made. In the US, litter, graffiti[1], and smoking were all greatly reduced over the past half century. The male smoking rate in America is half of the male smoking rate in Japan.
I think the idea that the Japanese form of capitalism is more benevolent than the rest is also a bit rosy-eyed. Statistics on hours worked aren’t great for Japan. It’s arguably not a good thing that low wage workers are prioritizing work. You say that there’s an aversion to screwing people over but in the same sentence you’re saying that low wage workers are being exploited and convinced to work unbilled hours.
[1] Jusr do an image search for “New York Subway 80s”
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Thanks, must read my sources more carefully! Still second lowest in G7 though.
Maybe. There's a lot of noise in these measurements. A lack of error bars doesn't mean a lack of errors. For many years activist orgs and newspapers liked to claim the UK was at the rock bottom of EU healthcare spending, that it spent far below other nations. When new accounting standards came in that tried to unify the way healthcare spending was measured between nations, overnight the UK went up to be about the mid…
We are also used to people who would rather we had a more US-like health system pretending that they care about it while actually trying to make it fail, effectively to privatise health care by the back door.
So it's a hard subject to debate rationally here for sure.