Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Do you want socialized medicine?

Look at this recent article from the UK. Keep in mind that American insurance companies might (I don't know if they do) delay procedures, but you have many companies to choose from. By contrast in the UK pretty much everybody is serviced by the NHS.
Hospitals delay non-urgent operations in bid to reduce deficits
Patients are being forced to wait for treatment so NHS trusts can balance their books.
Several primary care trusts (PCTs) confirmed they had a policy of imposing some form of minimum wait so that patients were not seen too quickly.
Kingston PCT has a standard 10-week wait for outpatient appointments while Suffolk PCT said routine procedures should not be carried out before 98 days had passed.
Doesn't that sound like fun? I can't wait for national health care in the US. We won't have to be burdened with the onerous choice of finding suitable health care, the government will simply provide everybody with the same sub-standard care (but just so they can balance the books).
The NHS finished last year more than £500 million in debt but its budget has increased over recent years.
In 2010, the NHS in England will spend well over £100 billion per year (more than £4,500 per household).
I believe its budget is currently around £90 some billion annually (almost double that number to get the equivalent dollar amount!).
Don't you feel so ready to vote for Hillary Care again?

Remember, companies exist to make money, and happy customers make you money. Insurance companies may not always be happy about claims, but they wouldn't dare to antagonize all of their customers. By contrast the government often doesn't care--they're official and you can't avoid them, so who cares if they do a good job?

~Matt

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