http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/13/constitution-butchers-stop-pelosis-slaughter-house/

Mark Rabich

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=697

She points out the sorry state of so much health care provision in the UK NHS

“Figures published in the latest Hospital Guide from the part-NHS, part-private Dr Foster organisation show that 12 hospital trusts including those with ‘foundation’ status are ’significantly underperforming’ — including nine which had been rated good or even excellent by the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission.

A further 27 are said by Dr Foster to have had unusually high mortality rates, generally considered a warning sign of care or treatment inadequacies.

True, comparative statistics like these are a minefield, and using death rates as a marker of performance can be misleading. But only a few days ago, horrific conditions were revealed at Basildon NHS Trust — which Dr Foster states has the worst mortality rates in the country.

Care Quality Commission inspectors found blood-spattered walls and filthy conditions with brown running water, mouldy bathrooms and soiled furniture and commodes.”

The really interesting bit was the inability and unwillingness of the health departments and bureaucrats to keep an eye on their own level of performance or lack of;

“And the more regulation there is, the worse things have got.

Foundation hospitals, after all, have their very own regulator called Monitor. This is said to be scrutinising the eight foundation trusts which have failed to reach basic standards. But what has Monitor been doing all this time while patients at these hospitals have been dying needlessly?

Then there’s the Care Quality Commission itself. Eight NHS trusts among Dr Foster’s 12 worst performers were recently judged by the Commission to be ‘good’ or even ‘excellent’ in its Annual Health Check ratings.

Even now its head, the Labour place-woman Baroness Young, says no further action is necessary against the 12 trusts and that some of Dr Foster’s data is ‘alarmist’.

Yet she also acknowledges that some information published by her Commission is up to 18 months out of date. And although her inspectors uncovered appalling neglect at Basildon, the Commission previously rated that Trust as ‘good’ for its quality of service and ‘excellent’ for its financial management.

Now Lady Young says the current inspection regime is ’simplistic’. For that, read ‘ludicrously self-serving’. Incredibly, it turns out the ratings given to hospitals rely on their own assessment of their performance.

So at Basildon, managers gave themselves — grotesquely — 13 out of 14 possible marks for cleanliness and performance, while the Alder Hey Trust declared itself the ‘best in the country’.

To cap it all, the chief executives of the eight trusts with the highest death rates awarded themselves bumper pay rises to suit their scandalous self-regard.

And the Care Quality Commission missed what was actually going on because they, too, relied upon these patently unreliable judgments.”

She highlights what is already obvious about government behaviour; their priority is self-preservation and re-election, not adequate and professional health care.

Damien Spillane

The US subsidizes (without taxpayer approval ) many inefficient industries – wheat, cotton, automobiles, lumber, rice….and now the banks. No one gets to vote on whether the money is taken for this purpose. Now that IS Socialism.

This is actually a result of people thinking that the command “do not steal” has an exception, “unless you have a majority vote”. Thus there is a faulty principle, voted democratically, that the government has the right to regulate free buyers and sellers. But then you should not be surprised that the first thing bought is the regulator.

It should not be surprising: an inefficient industry stands to gain millions of dollars by spending on lobbying for government force against competitors. But the higher costs on consumers are spread out over millions of people, who are not too badly inconvenienced, so have little incentive to combine and lobby. It’s called concentrated benefits v diffused costs.

The other huge problem is that the benefits are easily seen, i.e. more jobs in the protected industries, and the more money they have to spend in the economy. But what it not seen is the far more jobs lost in industries using the protected products. E.g. American sugar tariffs, thanx to political lobbying, cause Americans to pay several times the world price for sugar. And they caused Lifesavers to move to Canada. Also, the higher prices mean less money for consumers to spend on other goods, so these are further unseen costs that most won’t blame on tariffs. (See What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen by Frédéric Bastiat, 1850).

The only answer is not to whinge about corruption and lobbying, because the incentives make it inevitable, but to get the government out of the economy altogether (except preventing coercion and fraud, and enforcing contracts).

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

But simply throwing out a few smart-arse remarks adds nothing to this debate. I have already said plenty of times now that the US system is far from perfect, and clearly is in need of reform. The question is, which is the best type of reform: more or less government involvement?

As to the Australian system, all your remarks demonstrate is that you are lucky enough not yet to have waited for two years for major surgery, or sat on a stretcher in a public hospital hallway for 24 hours. Aside from that you bring nothing to this debate. If you expect to have comments posted here in the future, at a minimum, an intelligent contribution to the discussion will be required, instead of ad hominem foolishness.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Bill, as a natural born Australian, please accept my apologies for having to “endure” the “horror stories of the socialised (public) health care system”, here in Australia.
The thing is you see, we’re not America, I am sorry…….I suppose there are no “Horror Stories” over there right? Must be fantastic!!
You must miss it terribly….

Our Health care is no ordinary commodity. It is a ministry to maintain the very life & wellbeing of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, especially the poorer ones. That is why its called a Common-wealth. I for one am happy to pay more tax for it.

Noblesse oblige

Robert Phillips

Of course, how fantastic that Canada can make drugs so cheap to their consumers by government fiat and look so generous compared to the big bad pharma companies in the US!

But Canada isn’t the ones making the drugs in the first place. The US companies make the drugs (at about a billion in R & D per new drug) so that they can reap back the expenses and make a profit for the money they initially invested. If they can’t charge market price then they simply won’t produce the drug and Canada will not have new drugs to impose price controls on.

You say

“The free market/laissez-faire health care system can be seen operating in many countries, like Indonesia, & India”

India having free market/laissez-faire? I don’t know their system extremely well but this is got to be ridiculous.

If they had a free-market system then they wouldn’t have (until recently) ridiculously high tariffs (really nothing more than a tax on imports) on medicine. Tariffs are known to be one of the major ways that the poor in third-world countries are denied essential medicine and India is no different.

For example, with AIDS studies show that India has only around 20,000 to 36,000 with access to antiretroviral therapy (a pathetically low number), where Botswana, with low tariffs and taxes on pharmaceutical products, has the best access to medication for its AIDS patients in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

So in many cases in poor countries it is government taxes, import restrictions and tariffs (not to mention the poor infrastructure and services) that are denying the poor their access to health care.

Damien Spillane

“…but I have argued that efficiency as a value does not trump community.”

But why assume that ‘community’ and government welfare provision are synonymous? Why conflate community with the state?

Look at the magnificent act of benevolence and good-will wrought by the Bangladeshi Siamese twins Krishna and Trishna? This is real community in action.

Compare that to the entitlement mentality and resentment that the welfare state brings. There is no altruism, generosity, good-will or benevolence when someone’s wealth is forced from them and given somewhat to people in need (and many that are not) and mostly to government bureaucrats.

There is also no personal responsibility or virtue demanded of the recipients in response which is why the welfare state incentives those that don’t work, abuse drugs and live irresponsibly as the British Psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple has so elegantly documented.

Is this sought of society, pitting neighbour against neighbour, what you call community?

Damien Spillane

Just look at the magnificence of private charity in the work of separating the Bangladeshi twins, Trishna and Krishna. Many Australians contributed to total donations (as well as surgeons donating their time) in the hundreds of thousands for two orphans from a foreign country and different race. They also grabbed the hearts and attention of the Australian population who were desperate to see them pull through.

As Andrew Bolt points out, it was an act of charity that our politicians were unwilling to do.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_a_government_couldnt_have_wrought_this_miracle/

His whole piece is well worth reading for the story it tells of the power of private charity and how generous and racially colour-blind are Australians. This is the feat – and the accompanied good-will and altruism – that no governmental forcible redistribution of wealth could come close to achieving.

Damien Spillane