NHS rationing is 'necessary evil', say doctors

Source: Scotsman.com

LYNDSAY MOSS
HEALTH CORRESPONDENT (lmoss@scotsman.com)

Key quote
"Rationing is reduction in choice. Rationing has become a necessary evil. We need to formalise rationing to prevent an unregulated, widening, postcode-lottery of care. Government no longer has a choice." - ALEX SMALLWOOD, BMA

Story in full THE government and NHS must be more open with patients about the need to ration treatments and services in a system with a limited pot of cash, doctors said yesterday.

The British Medical Association conference heard that rationing was inevitable and a "necessary evil" in today's health service.

Scottish doctors also warned that targets which did not improve patients' care were being given preference to funding treatments which would make a difference.


Read more: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=995812007

It's called "being uninsured" or if you are insured, "that procedure is not covered by the Plan."

Your insurance company rations your access to healthcare services all the time. The difference is that in a public healthcare system the rationing decisions are made within the context of a representative democracy: at least theoretically we decide how to ration our healthcare. In a private system rationing is done by private corporations based on their fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits: your dying does not factor in.

Why anyone other than a shareholder of a private healthinsurance company would be in favor of private rationing for profit is a mystery of our modern world.

who will sail through a bypass operation and live another ten years. The rest will die during or shortly afterwards, their last few months marred by surgical recovery.

Everybody is screaming about the word "rationing." What is really occurring is the common sense recognition that sometimes heroics do more harm than good, and that we need to take a hard look at what works and what doesn't.

She was 80 years old when her cardiologist sent her in for an angioplasty, and the cardiac surgeon told her that she "had" to have a triple bypass and valve replacement. Since he barely spoke to us, we had only her word for it that he told her that if she didn't have it "her life would not be long nor would her quality of life be worth it."

Strangely enough, Medicare fully funds this surgery.

She lived hundreds of miles from all of us and was as stubborn as they come, so once it was done we could do very little to intervene in her two-year slide into side effects, dementia, and paranoia. We did keep flying out there, and I stayed most of the first summer, but...

But the scar healed so well! And her heartbeat sounded so good!
:mad: :cry: :mad:

Hekate

... for the headlines, ratings and general blather involving storms & teacups.

It avoids the press (and the public) having to look at the huge heaps of
corruption & death being spread around the world by our elected leaders
and *their* unelected corporate leaders.

Damn that's too serious to thing about ... what's on TV?

people say that "you wouldn't want to 'wait in line' to see a doctor."

i don't know what doctors they see in the US, but my doctor never has an appointment less than 2 weeks from the time i call. it took FOUR months to get an appt with a rheumetologist. 6 weeks to see a neurologist.

maybe we don't "have lines" here b/c people would die of exposure waiting this long.

The UK has an incredibly centralized healthcare system...the government pays the bills, the government own the hospitals, and the doctors are essentially government employees. It's centralized universal care taken to the extreme.

If universal coverage ever comes to the US, I would imagine that it will follow a model similar to that found in Canada. The federal government would effectively act as an insurance agency, but the actual medical care would be provided by private hospitals and doctors, or perhaps hospital networks run by the states and local counties. Any Canadians here can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it (my B-I-L lives in BC) the federal government provides no direct services other than some health clinics to the First Nations peoples and in a few of the more populated cities. Across the vast majority of the country, the Canadian medical system really isn't all that different from the US system. The difference lays in who pays the bills.

it's like the VA - the docs work for the govt. The Canadian setup is usually called 'single-payer'. Both work much better than private insurance, wherein the insurers lose money every time they actually have to pay a claim.

A few years ago, there was this bright, shiny war and the missus just had to have it. I wasn't too sure about it, but gosh, with its big explosions, snappy uniforms, and the promise that it would pay for itself over time, it just seemed to be too big an opportunity to miss. Besides, the folks one block over already had one going, and we had to keep up.

Now, the war isn't so shiny and new anymore. The uniforms are getting ragged and not just a little bit gamey. Some of the big explosions are going off around our lads instead of just blowing a few brown chaps to Kingdom Come. And the maintenance just keeps going up and up. So sorry, Mum. Looks like we can't really afford to get you that heart medicine after all.

Seeing as how we spend 50% more than Britain does already.