Posts Tagged ‘NHS’
How can we measure the result of privatising NHS England?
HOW surprising to see in The Guardian the usual moan about how flogging off the NHS is a very bad idea indeed. Which it might actually be but the really interesting question is how would we find out?
As for public accountability, there is none. Commercial contracts are redacted so that crucial financial information is not in the public domain. Government departments and companies refuse to release the necessary information on the grounds of commercial confidentiality and allow companies to sequester their profits in offshore tax havens. NHS staff transferred from the public to the private sector see their wages and benefits eroded. But all this is nothing compared with what is in store for patients.
In the new world it will no longer be possible to measure coverage or fairness. Former NHS hospitals, free to generate half their income from private patients, will dedicate their staff and facilities to that end, making it impossible to monitor what is public and what people are paying for.
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Posted: 29th, August 2012 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Why we really do want to decentralise the NHS – national does not work
SO. What do we think is the best system then? Taking all the people to dim to go into banking, sticking them in the Department of Health and giving them 10% of GDP, one tenth of all the gelt that the nation produces each year, to buy our health care for us?
Or perhas a slightly more decentalised system in which the tax money is still spent on scraping us up off the roads after an accident but we don’t rely on all those really celver people or the way that it’s spent? You know, perhas we allow people who actually know what they’re doing to spend it instead?
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Posted: 6th, August 2012 | In: Money | Comments (4)
Why The NHS Is So Cheap
I KNOW, we don’t think of it as cheap when we look at the £100 billion a year and rising in taxes that we have to pay to fund it. But by international standards the NHS really is quite cheap: 9 or 10% of GDP (GDP is all the money we have each year) as opposed to 11 or 12% in France and 18 % in the US.
Some will argue, some do argue, that this is all down to the fact that we’ve got this planned by lovely politicians and thus there are no greedy hucksters making profits from it. Could even be true but that’s not the only possible reason. One that we know very well is true is that those politicians doing the planning simply deny certain medical treatments to certain people:
Thousands of elderly people are dying unnecessarily early because ‘despicable’ age discrimination in the NHS is denying them treatment for cancer, a charity has warned.
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Posted: 26th, March 2012 | In: Money | Comments (3)
Smoking does not cost the NHS money: nor does obesity
SMOKING does not cost the NHS money: nor does obesity. Nor even does booze. So we can tell the health wowsers to bugger off the next time they use that argument upon us.
Read: The Killer Shisha tobacco scaremongering blows up in smoke.
Now it is true that all three impose costs upon the people that do it. Shorter lives for a start. But it’s also true that something that people do voluntarily must also provide benefits to them: and it’s up to each individual to decide which risks they want to take for which benefit.
And it’s that thing about shorter lives which is why the booze, tabs and rolls of sweaty fat don’t increase costs to the NHS. It’s the healthy people who live long enough to spend 5 years drooling into their bibs as they fade away from Alzheimers:
“Until age 56 annual health expenditure was highest for obese people. At older ages, smokers incurred higher costs. Because of differences in life expectancy, however, lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people and lowest for smokers. Obese individuals held an intermediate position. Alternative values of epidemiologic parameters and cost definitions did not alter these conclusions.”
The lifetime costs were in Euros:
Healthy: 281,000
Obese: 250,000
Smokers: 220,000
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Why you can’t have free trade and price fixing – its kills NHS patients
THERE’S a good piece here about the life and business of a parallel drug importer. Nice Austrian lad getting rich by buying drugs in cheap places (yes, we’re talking about prescription drugs, not the fun ones) and selling them on in expensive places.
This all happens because we have free trade across the European Union. Good thing to have too, people, products, capital and companies can all move as they wish.
However, we’ve also got a system of national, taxpayer funded in the main, health care services. And as always when governments are uying things there’s a temptation for them to fix the prices at which they buy them….and buyers tend not to fix those prices too high now, do they?
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Posted: 15th, March 2012 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Rat attacks man in Surrey hospital – NHS says it’s a mouse
WAS Jason Ketley attacked by a rat at a specialist care unit in St Ebba’s hospital, Epsom, Surrey?
The Daily Mirror reports:
“His ordeal only ended when staff spotted the 42-year-old stumbling around a corridor with the rat hanging from his neck by its teeth.”
And:
Nurses knocked the creature off and killed it. Hospital bosses claimed it was a field mouse.
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Posted: 27th, February 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comments (2)
Replacing all PIP breast implants on the NHS is a must
THE story of the faulty Poly Implants Prostheses (PIP) breast implants – the ones filled with industrial silicon – is gaining momentum. The British Government says the French-made PIP breasts might be faulty, but they will not replace them on the NHS. The French Government will replace any breasts containing the cheap silicon for women who had them for post-cancer reconstructive surgery. The French say that the prosthetics could rupture. In all, 300,000 woman across the world have had the implants – around 50,000 in the UK.
Are the cheaper PIP breasts implants- the cheap fakes cost £100 each, a third the price the correct grade ones – dangerous? The French National Cancer Institute investigated after eight women with PIP implants developed breast cancer. It found no evidence to suggest that there was a link.
Which all begs the questions: if cheaper, industrial silicon poses no risk to health why is it banned from breast implants?
But it turns out that the rate of rupture could be seven times higher than estimated. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, says the curent evidence does not justify safety concerns. But the current evidence is not all that thorough. He’s ordered a review.
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Posted: 2nd, January 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Kerrie Hates Her Big Girl’s Blouse and Killer Chest
Up in the the land of the ever-open chip shop is Kerrie Jewell, 41, who says her 40HH bust is close to killing her and she wants the NHS to wield the knife.
Kerrie says she has begged for help since she was 16-years-old and carried her enormous burden during 25 years of abuse from taunters.
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Posted: 8th, September 2011 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Why We Need Competition In The NHS
WHY we need comepetition for the NHS – or at least one reason why we do:
THE NHS is spending more than £20 for a loaf of gluten-free bread, 10 times more than the £2 charged for a standard small (400g) gluten-free loaf in Sainsbury’s.
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Posted: 19th, July 2011 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Woman Dies When NHS Doctor Fails To Spot Toilet Brush Wedged In Her Bottom
PETER Corton’s wife Cindy died in 2007 after media failed to spot a toilet brush wedged in her buttock.
In was 2005, when Sleaford, Lincolnshire’s very own Cindy Corton, 35, took a drunken fall in pal’s bathroom. She went to the doctor afterwards. An X-ray was taken. She was given the all clear. Dr Killian Mbewe could see nothing to worry about.
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Posted: 20th, May 2010 | In: Strange But True | Comments (10)
Paul Krugman Versus The Deadly NHS
MEDIA Scare Stories: The NHS is killing us all. Unless you’re Paul Krugman and the NHS isn’t:
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
But do not worry. help is at hand.
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman tells NY Times readers:
“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”
You can decide for yourselves who is right, although by the timr you know for certain it will be too late and the NHS nurse will have placed that thimble of warm tap water out of reach.
It’s a heated debate:
Ventura County sheriff’s Capt. Frank O’Hanlon says about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied Wednesday night on a street corner. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators.
O’Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform.
Medic!
A hospital spokeswoman says the top joint of the man’s pinky was bitten off, including the entire fingernail. It was not reattached.
Did he, you know…
She says he had Medicare.
And a drink? He’s 65…
Posted: 3rd, September 2009 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)
Police Log: Malaysian Man Beaten To Death To Stop Him Smoking
POLICE Log: Anorak’s Look At Crime In The News…
TO Malaysia, where Mohamed Ibrahim Kader Mydin, 47, and his wife, Rosina Mydin Pillay, 41, are visiting the family to mark the end of Ramadan.
As the BBC puts it, in one of the best opening lines of the year:
A Malaysian couple have been beaten to death by four close family members in a ritual apparently intended to help one of them stop smoking, police have said.
To the family get together.
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Posted: 4th, October 2008 | In: Strange But True | Comments (6)
