You Are the Future of Healthcare

Yet another dispatch from Britain’s wonderful NHS:

The London Telegraph reported Tuesday that the British government has a “plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget.” But it won’t come without enormous pain.

“Instead of going to a hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out ‘self-care’ as the Department of Health tries to meet Treasury targets to curb spending,” the Telegraph explained.

So when is a universal health care system not actually universal? When Britain’s 60-year-old National Health Service can no longer support the weight of its clamoring clientele.

Granted, there should be more self-treatment in developed nations. Emergency rooms and doctors’ offices are often overcrowded with patients who aren’t in need of urgent need but who go anyway because their insurance or government is paying. That type of open access to health care has led to overuse of the system.

The NHS, though, is hoping to cut down on more than frivolous visits. It’s looking for patients with “arthritis, asthma and even heart failure” to treat themselves, the Telegraph said.

Some of the self-care that will be expected of patients includes the monitoring of heart activity, blood pressure and lung
capacity using equipment that has been placed in the home.

Patients will be counted on to relate health information to doctors either by phone or computer link. To manage pain, they will administer their own drugs and other treatments.

This isn’t a completely horrid idea as socialized systems can be over-run by people running to their “free” doctor for every sniffle.

Still, if a private company were encouraging “self care”, don’t you think it would be the basis of a hilarious five minute section of Sicko II: The Re-Sickening?