The UK has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world according to a damning new report which said the nation has an “outstandingly poor” record of preventing ill health.How do you get 75,000 more doctors and nurses? How do you pay them when you're already "cash-strapped"?
Hospitals are now so short-staffed and underequipped that people are also dying needlessly because of a chronic lack of investment. The verdict, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will make embarrassing reading for David Cameron who denied the cash-strapped NHS is heading for its worst winter crisis.
Staff are too rushed to improve levels of care that have in many areas fallen below countries such as Turkey, Portugal and Poland. Almost 75,000 more doctors and nurses are needed to match standards in similar countries the OECD said in its annual Health at a Glance study comparing the quality of healthcare across 34 countries.
Maggie Thatcher said it best: "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money."
Did you read the actual report? It is far more critical of the United States health care system, which it notes spends far more on health care with much worse results.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Thatcher felt that support for the national health service was a conservative value because it supports business and affirms the value of human life.
And while that's cute, I note that when the rich and powerful of the world seek medical care, they don't seek it in Britain. The don't seek it in Canada. They don't seek it in Japan. They don't seek it in Taiwan. They don't seek it in Scandinavia. And they don't seek it in Venezuela. They come to the United States.
ReplyDeleteWhy might that be? It might be because care in the United States is *not* below that of Turkey, Portugal, and Poland, as the article stated is the case with Britain's NHS.