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German health cover isn't for the whole care, only part of it.
It's like getting the operation free but having to pay to be anaesthetised first...
That's a fallacy - not the central management bit, but the targets. It isn't the target that's the problem, it's the interpretation of those targets. The targets work together to a bigger aim - unfortuntaley too many managers (and front liners) only see their target and not the whole - they only care about the one which they are responsible for... hence they screw up the other for everyone else.
How is that different from "Choice" and "Payment by Results" (aka tariffs)?
Being a Sir doesn't mean that you are immune from talking crap somethimes
I think the NHS is better because it treats based on need, not on size of wallet.
wrong. haven't you seen the many people who can not receive cancer drugs for example because there is not enough cash in the pot? therefore it is not based on need, it's base don the size of the wallet.
yes notably the Welsh who get them for free. :mad:
but something serious such as cancer, they should always be free. the patient has paid national insurance all their lives they deserve free cancer treatment.
there is no need to raise taxes and I believe a lot of the money spent in the nhs is misspent therefore it needs to be allocated elsewhere, such as cancer treatment.
how does the Welsh afford free prescription charges? see if you can guess...
right ok..
anyway, do you think it's right for the welsh to receive free prescriptions but not for the rest of this 'united kingdom'?
or how about reorganizing how the money is spent or just not allow the welsh to be inferior than the rest of the British people?
but ALL welsh people are entitled to free prescriptions, it's not means tested, why shouldn't the rest of the 'united kingdom' also get this?
but you didn't say that and you could of said that a few posts ago, thanks for clearing that up at last.
well you may think the status quo is just 'the way it is' but for me that's not good enough. i don't like to see in my country certain citizens getting free health care while others are denied it. it's even more ironic when we're classed as 'united kingdom'.
Well they voted for it in that whole Welsh parliament thing. I think it's bollocks too tbh, but that's the way it works. I think if you want to look at chronic wastes of money, you should look at the money spent on that pseudoscientific bullshit homeopathy, which is clinically untested, completely unproven, and has no basis in scientific evidence. The fact that we can pay for that, but not pay for a drug because it hasn't undergone the correct clinical trials is bullshit (and I agree the cancer drug should go through the correct clinical trials, as should anything else). You want to pay for the good effects of having someone spend time with patients, then pay for more councillers, not some new age bullshit marsquerading as legitimate medicine.
Other than this, we have to accept that the money must go on the most cost effective methods of saving lives. The herceptin thing made me laugh (in a morbid sort of way). They staged a demonstration of the people who may die as a result of not getting this drug. Unfortunately no-one had the foresight to show up with a demonstration of the many more people who may die because their treatment had to be cut back on to pay for the far more expensive (and at that point untested) herceptin drug. Naturally, everyone thinks that their illness is the most important, but the fact is that there isn't an unlimited pot. And of course, just like America, everyone is free to choose insurance that will have a bigger pot of cash if they need it, and will provide treatment that the NHS may struggle to afford.
I see what you are saying and I understand there is not such thing as an unlimited pot but when there is a lot of money wasted, which there clearly is, cancer drugs should be free, at all costs. everyone has a right to life, that's what the European human rights says so why isn't this being met?
as for the welsh thing, i understand how they got free prescriptions in the first place but if it's good enough for the welsh then everyone else should be allowed to take advantage of this too.
Even if it meant more people with other illnesses would have to miss out on treatment? As far as I know, they make every effort to provide any method of treatment for cancer. Herceptin hadn't completed its clinical trials, and these people wanted it prescribed anyway, because they'd heard it was some sort of wonder drug. I'd rather make sure a drug's 100% safe first. It's an expensive drug, it was in the middle of testing, and these people were being treated for their cancer, just not with the drug that they thought they should've been. It's very easy to say that money is being wasted, but that's inevitable with any organisation on such a scale. Every government claims they're gonna save money by becoming more efficiant and saving money, seemingly without giving any examples of precisely what they're gonna do. I've given an example of homeopathy, which I think is a huge waste of money, but I don't have enough knowledge of the inner workings of the NHS to come up with any more examples tbh.
herceptin had been used abroad and, i think it was the u.s where it had been a success. why the U.K took so long to launch this drug was to save money, i believe. yeah, i also agree every organization wastes money to a certain extent but the nhs, many reports confirm that billions and billions are being wasted: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=425841&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
when such large sums are being wasted, i think it's right for me to say we could afford drugs to treat all patients that are in life threatening situations. that is my belief.
Can we?
A report done by a company who in their own words Reform
Not necessarily bad ideas, but hardly a balanced, independent report, if you have a clear agenda at the start of it. And from the article, again, there seemed to be very little substance in the way of exact examples of where money is being wasted (except one small story of a doctor being flown in, which presumably would follow your "save lives at all costs" policy if he was the only doctor able to do the job).
We can expect more waste than practically any other company, because they are the third biggest employer in the world. Now we can say that this needs restructuring, but other than a complete overhaul of this nature, I can't see where you can find more money. They're already overhauling the way that doctors hours work, which I believe is an important area and a positive move. I think a lot of GP's need to realise that if you work in one of the service industries, you have to work when people need you to work, not get everyone else to arrange their lives around you. Incidentally, funding for the NHS has only just gone past the European average, despite years of underfunding, so it's not surprising that other countries are ahead of us.
And yes, the NHS quite possibly wastes a few billion, but given its budget is £90bn or so, thats not that bad, I'd be curious to see how it compared with other organisations. The numbers involved are huge so any small drop from absolutely perfect looks dire.