This is beyond comprehension. Plans are apparently afoot to gut NHS services and more strictly ration care. From the story:
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:
* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.
Gee, Donald Berwick, how’s that “global treasure” NHS looking to you now?
What a tragic debacle that will cause suffering beyond comprehension. And this is is the milieu in which legalizing assisted suicide is being seriously contemplated! Unbelievable.
July 25th, 2010 | 1:17 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Stand In The Gap. Stand In The Gap said: BIOETHICS WATCH => NHS Meltdown: The Implosion Cometh http://dlvr.it/30VVR #912 #ocra #ucot #rs #tcot #tlot #sgp [...]
July 25th, 2010 | 3:23 am
You are of course aware that
(1) Britain is in the middle of a severe fiscal crisis and we (the British public) had been warned repeatedly before the last elections that severe cuts in government spending were inevitable. This does not represent a failure of the NHS specifically, it’s due to across the board belt-tightening.
(2) The Telegraph report is based on preliminary plans supposedly being considered by the NHS senior bosses. It’s unlikely many of these proposals will the see the light of day (the Lib-Con coalition has staked a great deal of political capital on “preserving front-line services”).
I also think we ought to resist the tendency to label any attempts at cutbacks as an “implosion”. More detail would be required to make this assessment. Does a “restriction on some of the most basic operations” mean that waiting times increase by 5%, 50% or 500%? What percentage of nursing homes are being closed? And crucially (with respect to this discussion) would this partially crippled NHS still outperform the US healthcare system in terms of healthcare outcomes per dollar spent? A fuel-efficient and well-designed car doesn’t lose these qualities because its owner becomes too poor to keep it on the road.
Any contraction of health services is unfortunate but when finances are tight cuts have to be made. And somehow I find it hard to believe the claim that dying cancer patients will be “told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends”. We’ll just have to see how this plays out (the next batch of UK headlines should clarify things).
July 25th, 2010 | 3:30 am
In light of the world-wide recession and 11% budget deficit, Prime Minister David Cameron will cut the budget. This also affects the NHS.
This is one obvious reason to keep the health-care a (mostly?) private business.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/7840129/Public-sector-will-bear-brunt-of-cuts-warns-David-Cameron.html
July 25th, 2010 | 12:03 pm
Raven Chukwu:
Considering the NHS isn’t exactly a wonderful institution to begin with, ANY cuts at all are a huge, huge problem and attempting to deflect from this fact does you (and your fellow Britons) little good.
The fact is, the NHS is a nightmare of epic proportions and, any way you slice it, is *is* going to get worse. The only question now is: how much worse. (It’s possible that things are so lousy now that if you’re reasonably healthy, you won’t even notice the decline, but lots of people that aren’t so lucky will.)
July 25th, 2010 | 12:39 pm
It all seems like a lose-lose situation to me. The NHS certainly cannot go forward as it once was, a bloated bureacratic monstrosity, but the inevitable and necessary cuts will certainly hurts many people–patients and practitioners.
If ever there were a learning moment for those (Mr. President, I’m looking at you) interested in a heavily regulated, if not completely nationalized, health system, it’s now with the NHS.
I certainly don’t envy Mr. Cameron.
July 25th, 2010 | 5:52 pm
ECM:
Everyone knows that the National Health Service isn’t perfect. No system is. Americans talk about the NHS for comparative reasons and in this context the questions you ought to ask are (1) what are its comparative advantages and disadvantages and (2) are the NHS’s problems (including the prospect of savage cutbacks) somehow arguments against the sort of healthcare changes Obamacare is supposed to bring about (i.e do these problems flow inexorably from such attempts at greater government regulation).
I never claimed that restrictions and cutbacks would not be a problem – I just have a natural aversion to media scare stories. Cuts will be made and there will have to be a great deal of restructuring (and when all is said and done the axe will probably fall harder on the bureaucrats themselves than on frontline workers) but there will be no “implosion”. (forgive me if I don’t scream “the sky is falling!” each time the Telegraph drops an acorn on my head).
And you refer to the NHS as “a nightmare of epic proportions”. Compared to what? Is your assessment based on public health statistics or have you merely taken it upon yourself to mourn even louder than those who are actually bereaved?
July 25th, 2010 | 8:29 pm
Actually, the federally funded Indian Health service has been limiting care for such things as hip and knee replacements for years. We did not fund IVF or even simple fertility services, and I don’t remember asking for any “obesity” surgery, even though our tribe had a high obesity rate and a 30 percent diabetic rate as a result.
One difference: Native Americans wouldn’t approve of killing grandmom by stopping her treatment.
They wouldn’t even sign a “living will”…because they didn’t trust the system.
July 26th, 2010 | 2:12 pm
As a Brit, I feel qualified to comment on this article. The NHS has been around since it`s inception in 1948. They didn`t get it right then, and it is certainly not right now. We have waiting lists for hospital treatments that get longer each year, and there does not appear to be any improvement whatsoever. I myself need an operation, but I have been told I will have to learn to live with my condition, because, a) it is major surgery and b) it is very expensive.
We used to have a pretty decent hospital in our town, but it got a reputation as a hospital of death due to the number of people who died unexpectedly, from causes not related to what they were for treatment of. Three of these, I knew personally. (they were, my mother, my next door neighbour and my friend`s daughter.)
We now don`t have much in the way of hospital care here as most of the services have been transferred to a hospital approximately 25 miles away. Heaven help anyone who suffers a heart attack!!! By the time an ambulance gets to you and you have been taken to the hospital 25 miles away, the chances are you will die.
I know that people around the world may think our healthcare is free, but it isn`t really. Yes, it is true that we don`t have to pay at our doctors surgery, or at the hospital when we go there. But it is NOT FREE. We all pay National Insurance contributions from our pay packet from the day we start work, until we retire. I myself am now retired, but I fail to see how my contributions for the 45 years I worked, would not be enough to pay for the operation I need. The trouble is that these contributions over the years also went to other things. This meant that medical services lost out. Apart from which, the NHS is top heavy with administrators and doctors and nurses seem to be less important. We have also had hospital wards closed due to lack of staff. Surely it would make more sense to reduce management and increase medical staff. Most ordinary people can see this, but the “Powers That Be,” can`t. I dread to think what will happen in America with “Obamacare.” I can see it ending up like ours. May I add, that I have benefitted from medical treatment in America, and I found it far superio to the NHS.
July 26th, 2010 | 2:23 pm
Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends. —-
I live in AMERICA — we have DOLLARS — what is the comment about “pounds” ??? Are they cutting “pounds” of drugs??
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
July 26th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Pounds are the UK currency. One pound is about $1.60.
July 26th, 2010 | 5:17 pm
Carol:
I’ve been in Britain only a few years and have consequently had only a limited period of interaction with the NHS (and what little interaction I have had has been largely hassle-free) but I do know that it is impossible to make global assessments of the effectiveness or otherwise of healthcare systems based solely on one’s personal experience (i.e in the absence of statistics which show what the experience is like for users in general).
Obviously personal accounts are important (and an institution such as the NHS which produces horror stories with such regularity ought not to be held up as a model at all) but anecdotal evidence is not very useful when attempting to make cross-country comparisons. I’m sure, for instance, that there are lots of places in America where the nearest adequately equipped medical centre is a long way off. I’m sure there are lots of people (especially poor uninsured people) who would have a better healthcare experience in the UK than in the US.
Don’t get me wrong. If I had a great deal of money and a serious medical condition requiring specialist attention an NHS hospital would probably not be my first choice – but if I happened to be living from hand to mouth and in dire financial straits I think I would rather take my chances with the NHS (in spite of its flaws) than throw myself at the mercy of the American Healthcare System.
[And since I have never lived in the US and do not have suitably damning statistics to hand (I must have glanced at them at some point but the specifics escape me), I have to admit that my impression of American healthcare is largely based on (1) the articles, analyses and acrimonious debates which preceded the passage of Obamacare (2) online jokes about HMOs and (3) anecdotal accounts (in all their glorious unreliability) from several friends who have worked as doctors both in the UK and the US]
July 28th, 2010 | 1:02 pm
[...] well is government-run health care working out in the UK? Story here from the UK Telegraph. (H/T [...]
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