Comments on: A not very healthy budget

By: Paul Giles

Paul Giles — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:07:57 +0000

AndyC, could you do me the favour of pointing me towards a straightforward layman’s guide to different ways of financing health-care, (book or internet link – equally useful)?

Thanks in advance if you’re able to oblige.

By: Paul Giles

Paul Giles — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:03:28 +0000

Bazman, in what way is the German ‘culture’ different to the British one? We used to pride ourselves on a talent for compromise – what is there about our ‘culture’ that obliges us to choose between state-provision and a market free-for-all? Can we learn nothing from other countries?

(One fool can ask enough questions to keep a hundred wise men too busy to answer them all. Sorry.)

By: Bazman

Bazman — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:21:38 +0000

All very interesting. Tap Tap Tap… Why does everyone just know it will end up? Road tolls are probably the best way forward in raising taxation for the roads. The population know exactly how it will turn out, sat in a traffic jam and paying the same taxes with a pound a mile for the pleasure and this is why they are dead against it. How about a toll motorway at £4.70 each way? No subsidy there. Privately owned train journey 50 miles out from London for five people return £200+. Buy your own train! A Daily mail nonsense campaign is needed. ‘Subsidy Alert!’ Never happen. Charity motorways anyone? I could donate a couple of bags of sand and do a bit of digging with my own tools on Saturdays. Wife/weather permitting.
What can we get away with and how long can we get away with it will be the motto of and insurance/ medical company involved in the state system. Just like the pharmaceutical firms milking the system/taxpayer for all they are worth. You just know the taxpayer will get even more stuffed than he already is. Oh yes he will!
Private healthcare will turn out just the same way. Comparing German systems with British ones is not real. They will never be the same as the culture is completely different. Compare the American health system as that is the way it will go. To say you have to take Michael Moore with a bucket of salt is insulting ones intelligence. I can sort the facts out for myself thanks. The film is primarily for entertainment and for an American/world audience lays it on pretty thick to get the story across.
What age are you in? Nurses on bikes, rotund cheery doctors, scary matrons, set in an England that never was and never will be? (This England probably existed for about a thousand people in the 1930′s.) Healthcare run on charity? Millions cheered when it was introduced and for good reason.
If you want to see how your free market wet dreams will turn out just visit Russia. First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the money.

By: Mike Stallard

Mike Stallard — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:57:35 +0000

My daughter is a vet in Australia. What you say is correct. Actually vets do often work in practices which are owned by businesses. And these businesses make very sure that there is as little sueing as possible!

By: Lola

Lola — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:44:17 +0000

Have a read of this;….

http://mises.org/story/3586

By: AndyC

AndyC — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:45:44 +0000

We should privatise every acute hospital in the country, let doctors decide where to send patients, and in each case let the hospital send the bill to the government. Broadly speaking, that’s what large parts of Europe do.

It probably wouldn’t be any cheaper than now, but at least the money would go on treatment. The government bureaucracy could be shrunk massively once the DOH is no longer trying to run everything.

I analyse health markets for a living. It’s hard to think of anywhere apart from the UK where using the private sector is automatically considered wicked by the authorities.

Drug pricing is an interesting issue. New treatments are getting more and more expensive. We already use generics to a very large degree in the UK, so for branded treatments I suspect we are headed for either price controls or greater use of rationing.

By: Lola

Lola — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:31:29 +0000

Quite. And no-one in their right minds would accept such a situation. But, the State is just no good at dealing with the millions of equations that constitute all the millions of individual interactions in a free society. It replaces locally run charitable and voluntary help with huge top down bureaucratic rationing that has no incentive or abillity to distinguish between your young mum and the scrounger. Given that the various bits of the health care world were liberated from the dead hand of statism it is quite easy to imagine how human compassion in the various bits of it would sort out a way of providing help to your young mum at no immediate cost. And liberating health care does not mean privatising all of it commercially. Again, there are all sorts of organisational structures that will evolve, as soon as we can get the state out of it all.

By: alan jutson

alan jutson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:33:43 +0000

Just think how much Home carers save the Country.

I well understand the term, “but its my Duty” but these people are often taken advantage of, with little help being offered by the so called proffessionals, to help them Care.

Many peole are now discharged from Hospitals earlier than they would normally, if they have a carer at home.

Interesting that with the merger of the Royal Berks and Battle Hospitals, we now have exactly the same number of beds that we did, when we had two Hospitals on different sites.

This fact came from the Chief Exectutive, to a question I posed to him at an after dinner speech a couple of years ago.

So now we have the Battle Hospital site sold, and now fully developed by Tesco.

The Royal Berks Hospital site is now crowded, and future growth in bed numbers if any is possible, is limited, for an area where housing and demand is growing.

Joined up thinking perhaps not, but some income generation made to pay for the move, by selling off the land at Battle Hospital.

Future problem when we need more beds, we need to purchase a new site as well as build, rather than just redevelop a site already owned.

By: David

David — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:44:39 +0000

Moore is not accurate; and anyway there are a lot of models – German, French, Italian, and Spanish to name 4 large systems that ahppily rely on a mixture of public and private hospitals without monolithic bureaucracy. And generally get better outcomes than we do.

By: Alister

Alister — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:24:11 +0000

The reason the drugs are patented is so that the companies can make money off the patent. The patent is what has the value, thus if the UK patent was bought (licensed) by the NHS the drug company would be assured of making a steady income in the UK from the regular licence payments. Drug companies would compete harder as there would be less money for small improvements. The risks of a patent being superseded or the NHS not being able to fund buying your drug would be vastly reduced. Today we cases of drugs costing 50K+ with life extended by 6 months, and NICE having to make judgement calls on effectively who dies when. The big problem is NICE is NOT allowed to negotiate the price, it has to take what it’s given. The easiest and biggest change any government could and should make is let NICE negotiate!