Tories, the Free Market and the NHS.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I have come on this forum before and praised the Free Market ( or Capitalist/ Corporate interests 0 for delivering a much cheaper and more efficient phone service than the State could provide.

However, when the Corporations/Free Market/ Private Money moves into health care, there are problems.

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/mediacentre/releases/10-09-2011-conference-adrian-ramsay.html

As Adrian Ramsey points out in the section marked 'NHS', Previous governments have attempted to bring not just private money, but corporate logic into the NHS.

The net result is that Doctors are now being forced to compete, and not co operate in saving lives and improving health outcomes.

Whereas before, a new improvement was to be shared among dedicated professionals, new techniques are now regarded as 'trade secrets' to be guarded in order to out perform other health trusts.

So, my take is that competition is good in the phone industry( an analysis backed by the BBC on the links I provided in that discussion). However, competition and opening up the NHS to private enterprise and the competition culture is not good for the NHS.

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Interesting you should have come up with this.

James Meek has an interesting article in the London Review of Books:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n18/james-meek/its-already-happened

Give it a scan and see what you think.

BTW, your posts are getting 'tighter', better presented, and more readable.

[Tips hat.]

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Agreed. No more rambling -> better discussion.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I think that pastor Lenny deserves kudos for that as much as me.

Also, an excellent contribution by yourself, if I may say so.

I have long felt that the NHS is a victim of it's own success.

It is keeping people alive for longer and thus it's patients get to be more expensive. But isn't this what Socialism is ~ actually~ supposed to be doing ???

Observations on hospitals

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I had the opportunity to compare medical services provided by two types of hospitals: private and public. What I found was that I was treated like a mere number at a private hospital whereas I was treated like a human being at a public hospital. When health care is profit oriented, patients become mere objects of gain.