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?
Comments
Yeah, I agree with both points. If a private company tried it they’d be attacked non stop… and… its not totally a bad idea.. You should be able to take your own blood pressure or run some other simple tests yourself and its probably easier for you than going to doctor’s office once a week to have them do it. Were I given a choice, I’d want to do it myself… I hate taking time off work to go to unimportant* follow up visits…
* err, umm, not unimportant but routine and/or for simple tasks like blood pressure or to have two stiches removed… I can tell if they’re infected or not…
Posted by crichton on 01/10/2008 at 08:24 PM (Link to this comment | )
“This doesn’t sound like a recipe for addiction. Not at all…”
I’m thinking that might mean giving themselves a shot now and then. Their prescriptions would still be reviewed / given by a doctor (I’d think).
When they start having do it at home surgeries and such I will be worried. I just believe every day there is another story about the faults of socialized health care. And for the same reasons as to why Barak wont be elected socialized health care wont be put into effect. America is not ready for a president of african decent or government ran health care.
When they start having do it at home surgeries and such I will be worried. I just believe every day there is another story about the faults of socialized health care.
Except no one is really calling this a “fault” of socialized health care. Merely pointing out that if this were a private insurance company there would be outrage at their audacity to make people carry out some self examinations, thus surprising every diabetic with an insulin tester.
America is not ready for a president of african decent
Wrong. Just not necessarily Obama.
or government ran health care.
We’ve got it. Its bloated inefficient, costing us way too much money, screws with the “private” health industry, and democrats want to increase the number of people on it.
America is not ready for a president of african decent
What would make us “ready”?
Posted by biafra on 01/19/2008 at 04:35 PM (Link to this comment | )
“What would make us “ready”?”
A conservative black candidate… but they’re not ‘really black’.. ‘52 states’!
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This doesn’t sound like a recipe for addiction. Not at all…
Isn’t it funny how those opposed to our kapitalistic, corporate-run eeeeevil health care system in the U.S. and want an NHS system, are the same people who decry all of those Vioxx et al commercials on TV because doctors should be the ones deciding what drugs people take, not the patients.