Consider this another data point that will largely get ignored when Democrats and the media start beating the drum again on “Medicare for All” in the 2018 midterms. The UK’s vaunted single-payer system has collapsed into “third world” conditions, thanks to a lack of resources that has ambulances unable to pick up patients, who would find difficulty in getting an empty bed at a hospital. The order came down this week from on high to cancel as many as 50,000 scheduled surgeries over the next several weeks until the National Health Service can figure out how to climb out of the hole (via Guy Benson):
Every hospital in the country has been ordered to cancel all non-urgent surgery until at least February in an unprecedented step by NHS officials.
The instructions on Tuesday night – which will see result in around 50,000 operations being axed – followed claims by senior doctors that patients were being treated in “third world” conditions, as hospital chief executives warned of the worst winter crisis for three decades.
Hospitals are reporting growing chaos, with a spike in winter flu leaving frail patients facing 12-hour waits, and some units running out of corridor space.
It’s not just the hospitals, either. The NHS will close down outpatient clinics as well, leaving Britons with very few options for healthcare at the beginning of 2018:
Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, on Tuesday ordered NHS trusts to stop taking all but the most urgent cases, closing outpatients clinics for weeks as well as cancelling around 50,000 planned operations.
Believe it or not, UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt considers this an improvement over last year’s performance. At least this time people got advance notice of the closures:
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “What is different this year compared to last year is that last year we had a lot of operations cancelled at the last minute. A lot of people were called up the day before their operation and told: ‘I’m sorry, it can’t go ahead.’
“And we recognise that it is better, if you are unfortunately going to have to cancel or postpone some operations, to do it in a planned way … Although if you are someone whose operation has been delayed I don’t belittle that for one moment and indeed I apologise to everyone who that has happened to.”
He thanked NHS staff for their “heroic” job, saying they were working “beyond the call of duty”.
Theresa May had earlier praised the NHS, saying that the socialized-medicine system had done a “fantastic job” of preparing for the winter. Perhaps, but only in the context of single-payer systems that operate on a shortage mentality in the first place. That’s the problem with every single payer system in the world; their funding comes not from an organic exchange of services for payment, but from government budgets which have nothing to do with demand or price signaling at all. The former system allows for investment growth to meet demand, while the latter restricts resources on a rationing basis regardless of demand.
The end result, as Britons continually experience, is third-world conditions and a severe lack of access
Why don’t Micheal Moore do us all a real favor go over to Britain and get his brain replaced the one he has now is walnut sized
That’s what happens when the party in power deliberately underfunds the National Health Service. That they’ve been doing so is an open secret. Do you think we’re immune here? Wait until the revenue losses resulting from tax reform begin to catch up with Medicaid and Medicare. It’s a plan, and you’re part of it.
@Greg: There is only x amt of money and the EU wants it, thats an agreement they should just walk away from without alimony.
@<a href="#comment-54451]@Greg: Medicare wasn’t cut under the tax bill. But if you feel bad pay a little more voluntarily and get all your friends to chip in too.
Medicare is well into the red. What do you and the Democrats propose to fix it?
“Every hospital in the country has been ordered to cancel all non-urgent surgery until at least February in an unprecedented step by NHS officials.” Well, raise taxes. Print money. That’s always the liberal response.
One wonders what, in a system that only lays for the most urgent treatment what WOULD constitute “non-urgent”?
@Spurwing Plover: It would be just as much a socialist propaganda piece as all the rest.
@Greg: “Do you think we’re immune here? Wait until the revenue losses resulting from tax reform begin to catch up with Medicaid and Medicare. It’s a plan, and you’re part of it.” Medicare is funded by the participants. As with Medicaid costs, the problem is that you liberals keep handing it out to those who don’t contribute to the program or taxes.
The left doesn’t care about the harm their entitlement for votes schemes, only buying the votes necessary to attain power.