Pirate's Cove

As America slowly moves towards full government run health care, Britain, a country 1/40th the size of the USA in geography (#79 on the size chart, with the USA at #3) is moving away from single payer and government control, and has actual plans to do this

Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.

The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.

And tens of thousands of jobs would be shifted to the private sector, as government parasites are forced to get jobs not involving telling people what they can and can’t do, restricting medical care, and sucking up the people’s money. If the UK, which has one fifth the population of the USA, is having trouble with its government run health system, what chance would the US have, especially with the way we value our freedom from government (at least, most of us, who have become adults, vs liberals, who are perpetual children)?

In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”

And, BAMM!, there’s the money quote: they are going to re-institute the bond between the patient and the doctor. This is what has been lost in countries with a socialized/nationalized health system (you can’t quite call it “care,” since care is not part of the equation). This is what will be lost as the US implements ObamaCare. Decisions will be taken out of the hands of the patients and the medical professionals, and put in the hands of faceless government wankers, people who do not know the patient, see them as simply a number in a national “prison” system, and could care less about the patient.

What is happening in England (the plans do not apply to the other parts of the UK) is a small step, shifting a smaller budget into the hands of medical professions. Once the people of England realize that they are getting better care faster, they will want more. More control, better service, better access. And will realize fully how dreadful their health care has been.