I'd better not get ill any time soon.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Don't worry, HBM, the private sector will step in and cover the shortfalls in services. I mean, they always do, don't they?

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Don't worry, HBM, the private sector will step in and cover the shortfalls in services. I mean, they always do, don't they?

[Clinton Huxley]

I blame nick Clegg

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Don't worry, HBM, the private sector will step in and cover the shortfalls in services. I mean, they always do, don't they?

You make baby Seth cry.

[Seth]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Welcome to socialized medicine health-care rationing...I told you so...

[Atheist-Lite]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Welcome to socialized medicine health-care rationing...I told you so...

Cross-infection. The worst of the NHS going to the US and the worst of the US system coming here. I blame a lack of humanity, imagination and intelligence for allowing the beancounters control....it is always cheaper to let the patient die.

[Tero]

Dead patients are much less costly.

[Seth]

Debt-hit Darent Valley Hospital considers NHS merger

...But she added: "We recognise that for people's convenience, they need to be able to access the majority of services locally."...

I don't fancy having to go all the way to sodding Gillingham for any hospital treatment.

Welcome to socialized medicine health-care rationing...I told you so...

Cross-infection. The worst of the NHS going to the US and the worst of the US system coming here. I blame a lack of humanity, imagination and intelligence for allowing the beancounters control....it is always cheaper to let the patient die.

Has less to do with beancounters than with Fabian Socialists and Progressives. The beancounters are just the executioners of public policy.

But you're right, it's always cheaper to let the patient die, it also removes them as an irritant to the body politic, and the classic Marxist solution is to hurry the demise of the patient along significantly when they become an irritant to the socialist body politic...sort of like the body rejecting an organ...generally by starving and working them to death, or in the case of ever-efficient China, putting a bullet in their heads.

The good thing about the US system, at least so far, is that absolutely anyone has the opportunity to get any sort of health care they need or want at almost any time of the day or night, and the best, most advanced health care at that, in the United States, which is why the heads-of-state of socialist countries like, oh, France fly to the US for advanced treatments.

Sure, it may be expensive, but it's available, something you can't say for nations with mature socialized medicine systems like, oh, Canada and the UK. To get immediate advanced care in those places, you have to go outside the socialist system right back into the capitalist one.

There's a reason for that which uniformly escapes the understanding of socialists. TANSTAAFL.

[Clinton Huxley]

US currently 34th for infant mortality rates which perhaps means that you don't have the "best and most advanced" care available there...

[Clinton Huxley]

Interesting little study - NHS comes out of this quite well but the Tories will soon see to that...

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media ... l_2010.pdf

[MrJonno]

Local small hospitals for non-emergency treatment is a waste of money but is popular which has always been an issue. Small hospitals also don't give the best treatrment is as you don't get the same number of experts in one area but no local MP is every going to say this if they want to be elected

[Seth]

US currently 34th for infant mortality rates which perhaps means that you don't have the "best and most advanced" care available there...

Sure it does. The statistoid doesn't reflect the quality of American health care, it reflects a good many other things mostly having to do with cultural practices and lifestyle and the fact that many mothers in the US don't bother to take care of themselves or their fetuses (as reflected in the incidence of abortion in this country). We can keep premature babies alive and healthy that nobody else in the world can keep alive, but if the mothers don't take care of themselves and their fetuses, by their own volition, there's nothing the health care system can do to help them. We're not into forcing pre-natal care on mothers, you see. They have the freedom to decide for themselves.

The same argument is true for things like heart disease. That's largely a lifestyle choice. How you live your life is the most important factor in whether you have a heart attack or not, but once you have one, our system can treat it better than anywhere in the world. If you don't want to live a health lifestyle, you will die early. So what? Big deal. Liberty is more important than health to some people.

Mortality rates in any specific category are not accurately reflective of the overall quality of any heath care system because there are other factors involved. This is particularly true of infant mortality, which depends largely on pre-natal care for the mother, which is relatively cheap and easy to provide as it consists of lifestyle counseling and vitamins. All that is freely available here from numerous sources including the internet and the drug store if expecting mothers bother themselves to take advantage of the information. Many don't. That's a cultural issue, not a medical care quality issue.

That's the fallacy of the sort of statistoids that you cited. They are based on fallacious premises, and are therefore fundamentally propagandistic lies.

The basis of your statistoid, which I believe comes from the WHO, is the socialist notion that everyone is "entitled" to complete medical care, and that because the US does not have a socialized medical care system that provides any and all medical care (including preventive care) on demand, free of charge, that our system is "worse" than systems that do.

But that's a cultural misunderstanding. We believe people are responsible for their own health, and for their own health care costs, and we give them the liberty to choose whether, how and when they will obtain health care at their own expense, and we give them liberty to do things and live lives that are dangerous to their health. We provide free emergency life-saving care to anyone who needs it at every single federally-funded ER in the country, and there is plenty of low-cost or no-cost charitable care available, including more than 600 Catholic hospitals where care can be obtained free of charge if you're indigent or poor. And that discounts all the other charitable religious hospitals run by other denominations that exist in the US. We even have Medicare for the elderly and disabled, and Medicaid.

And the technical quality of medical care in the US is indisputably unparalleled anywhere else on the planet. We have the most advanced medicine available to us in the history of mankind. No, it's not always free, but that's precisely WHY we have it available to us, because of the free-market competition for advancing the state of the art in medical care.

So yes, we do in fact have the best medical care system in the world...if you choose to take advantage of it. If you don't, well, that's your choice.

[Pensioner]

Well as socialist I believe that everyone should have medical care and I also believe that everyone should have a roof over their heads. If that means we tax the rich and the corporations and the multinationals, so be it. The more that the Tory bastards in this country scream and shout the better I like it, fuck them says I.

[Atheist-Lite]

Well as socialist I believe that everyone should have medical care and I also believe that everyone should have a roof over their heads. If that means we tax the rich and the corporations and the multinationals, so be it. The more that the Tory bastards in this country scream and shout the better I like it, fuck them says I.

Even in the Labour years they were putting folks of a certain age down under the NHS. It was a way of reducing waiting lists and meeting targets. You can't be serious about supporting socilaised medicine?