Record numbers go abroad for health

Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs.

More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year – a figure that is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade. Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

America's likely future if we ever get socialized medicine.

Ah, another gem from the Torygraph!

What I try to say, which nobody seems to hear, is that there is no perfect health care system.  There never has been and there never will be.  Britain's NHS has problems.  No doubt.  America's health care industry problems are a damn sight worse.  The number of Americans with no insurance at all is greater than the entire populations of Canada and Australia combined and we can't even get our dysfunctional government still fights about whether all children should be covered.  There should be no question about this whatsoever.  I know the right-wing biased U.S. media loves this kind of story, but we'd better look into our own backyard and deal with our own problems.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting custom. Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.

According to the information, Malaysia is a more popular destination for surgery than the U.S.  That ought to tell you something right there.
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Please find a more valid source than the Telegraph for news.  It's the Fox News equivalent for the U.K.

By the same token, the Guardian is on the other extreme.

The problems in today's NHS stem from the Tory reforms, trying to bring "business efficiency" into the health service.. bringing competition and a health "market"; the Labour party has if anything made things worse, pouring huge amounts of money in to meet headline-grabbing targets, trying to foster choice without thinking of the inevitable consequence of choice: that those hospitals which aren't chosen have financial and morale problems, yet can't close for demographic or political reasons (which negates the whole point of business efficiency).

The one thing that appeals about the American system is that you don't have the political involvement; instead, however, you have shareholder profit to worry about... so I guess I'd rather stick with what we have, flawed as it may be.


Ah, another gem from the Torygraph!

I see you've taken to calling it that... you don't by any chance get Private Eye out there, do you?

While not quite as extreme as Fox seems to be (I think you'd need the Mail for that), the Torygraph does frequently let its bias get in the way of its factual reporting.  Especially when talking about the EU.

It's the Fox News equivalent for the U.K.


Wouldn't that be Sky News?

I see you've taken to calling it that...


Wonder where MaxwellSmart got it?

Wouldn't that be Sky News?


That too...  There is more than one conservatively biased news source in the U.K., just like there are multiple ones here.  Obviously, there are plenty of liberally biased ones here and there too.

The problems in today's NHS stem from the Tory reforms, trying to bring "business efficiency" into the health service.. bringing competition and a health "market"; the Labour party has if anything made things worse, pouring huge amounts of money in to meet headline-grabbing targets, trying to foster choice without thinking of the inevitable consequence of choice: that those hospitals which aren't chosen have financial and morale problems, yet can't close for demographic or political reasons (which negates the whole point of business efficiency).
Sounds pretty effed up, Phil.  The hospitals can't get the money to improve, but they can't go out of business because it's against the NHS regs.  Reminds me of the way people keep sick old dogs alive when they should have put out their misery years before.  Oh, the poor thing, he suffers so much....

The one thing that appeals about the American system is that you don't have the political involvement; instead, however, you have shareholder profit to worry about... so I guess I'd rather stick with what we have, flawed as it may be.
Oh we've got politics out the old wazoo.  The older folks get covered by Medicare and the poor folks get covered by Medicaid.  The former is a federal program, the latter is a mish-mosh of state-run programs.  Of course, government regulates all kinds of things in the private industry from pharmaceuticals to hospital equipment. The right-wingers salivate over the idea of putting all publically funded programs to a quick death.  Privatize absolute everything and absolutely everything will be hunky-dory.  That's their philosophy.  Medicaid ain't great but it's better than nothing, especially after your flat broke 'coz of 50 grand in medical bills your private insurance wouldn't cover!
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I see you've taken to calling it that... you don't by any chance get Private Eye out there, do you?
Acutally, I heard "Torygraph from one of the Brits on this board, possibly you!


While not quite as extreme as Fox seems to be (I think you'd need the Mail for that), the Torygraph does frequently let its bias get in the way of its factual reporting.  Especially when talking about the EU.

FOX is more like the Gestappo newsletter or something.
:P

Wonder where MaxwellSmart got it?


Acutally, I heard "Torygraph from one of the Brits on this board, possibly you!

Hey, somebody listens to me :)

The "Torygraph" (occasionally "Hurleygraph", for reasons obvious to anyone who got the paper during the several-month period that they had pictures of Liz Hurley for no valid reason whatsoever), similarly the Grauniad (celebrating the Guardian's propensity for typos) were coined by the satirical magazine Private Eye - a far more reliable news source than most newspapers, if only for their policy of printing letters from people who think they've been badly treated by the Eye. 


Sounds pretty effed up, Phil.  The hospitals can't get the money to improve, but they can't go out of business because it's against the NHS regs.  Reminds me of the way people keep sick old dogs alive when they should have put out their misery years before.  Oh, the poor thing, he suffers so much....

The thing (well, one of the things) that gets me annoyed is that the current divergence of care (the good hospitals getting more money and getting better, the bad ones in a downward spiral) is not just a predictable result, it's an inevitable result of this "choice" mantra.  And you get a government with a bunch of great stats to quote to people, and an opposition with equally compelling statistics to show how badly things are going... neither addressing the (frankly bloody obvious) problems with the underlying structures.


Click on the link in post #5 in this thread.  ;)

Incidentally, if you look at the http://www.inthe00s.com/Themes/babylon/images/post/xx.gif glyph next to a message title, you can get a link to point directly to the message (e.g. my post mentioning the Torygraph)

We used to call the Boston Globe the Bosses' Globe.

The "bosses" being left-wing short-hand for the ruling class, the captains of industry. 

The Boston Globe is considered a liberal paper, but my friends and I weren't liberals, we were rock-throwing reds!

I've mellowed with age, but I still see the "liberal media" as the "corporate media" if it is owned by giant corporations.  I don't give a crap how many commentators are in favor of gay marriage.
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