Comments on: IS THIS THE FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT?

By: Eric Blair

Eric Blair — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:06:23 +0000

bobnoxious: your troll-fu is weak.

You already are a number to an insurance company, that is how you are identified, it is generally called a member number. Now, if your coverage is denied, you get told why, and typically there is an appeals process. It is messy. That’s just the way it is. Now, what Rick leaves out is that if it is an insurance company, you do have the option to sue them if you want. Good luck with that if it’s the government.

As to the 50,000 dead of secondary infections, that has nothing to do with insurance companies, and everything to do with hospital hygenic procedures, I read the article.

By: bobnoxious

bobnoxious — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:44:21 +0000

Rick, you wrote regarding the rationing of health care:

“Since private insurance companies routinely make those kinds of decisions here already, the difference will be in treating the patient as a number or a customer”.

Please inform me, if my health coverage is denied, will I be a number or a customer in the US? Can you flesh that out a bit?

Oh, here’s something I read yesterday:

“A new study has shown that nearly 50000 US medical patients die every year of blood poisoning or pneumonia picked up in hospitals”.

Faced with that should I prefer to be a number or a customer?

By: Drongo

Drongo — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:07:42 +0000

Interestingly, Staff Hospital is one of the trusts that has been made a “foundation” trust in the current push towards an internal-market driven NHS. The idea is that, while normal acute trusts were closely monitored by the health authority, foundation trusts are given a lot more leeway in managing their affairs. The long term goal was to semi-privatise these trusts as they proved more financially independant and proved their flagship status. They already run by charging by service provided rather than by simple budget allocation. The problem has been that the move to a more loosely controlled model has allowed people tobasically fudge their figures in a way that hits the targets rather than improving healthcare as a whole.

Oh, and the Daily Mail is one of the more extreme papers in the UK. I’d get my information from a more unbiased source, like the Times (centre-right), Guardian (left), Independant (centre-left) or Telegraph (right).

By: brokenpolsys

brokenpolsys — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:37:58 +0000

And the people dieing now, for utter lack of healthcare in America? How do they not figure into this article at all? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…

I guess you didn’t understand. Not surprising since I have no idea where that analogy fits. I would say first that there are no provable figures for people “dying” for lack of health care in America. It is impossible to make that claim and those that do are politically motivated. (Harvard) There are people who have health insurance who also don’t go to the doctor for treatment. You would have to be a mind reader to figure out how many people don’t go to the doctor out of fear and how many don’t go because of the cost. Since I don’t think you’re a gypsy, we can dispense with the idea that anyone has any idea about numbers of people who die because they don’t have health insurance.

Secondly, this post was about the conditions of hospitals in a government run health care system. If you want to write about the uninsured, get your own damn blog.

ed.