SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From Men's Journal:
Every time you walk into a physician's office, you run the risk of overtreatment: Tests you don't need, medications that are ineffective (or dangerous), procedures that cause more problems than they solve. In many cases the best thing for your health is to do nothing.
Make no mistake: A good doctor is, or should be, your most trusted resource if you're sick. If you're not sick and he wants to treat you anyway, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor. But it does make him a player in a system that operates according to the unspoken and often unexamined assumption that more treatment is better for the patient. It's unquestionably better for the financial health of the stakeholders in the system: the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, the health-insurance companies, and the hospitals. If you don't know how the game is played, the odds go up that you'll wind up the loser.
What do you people think, will people change if they know this?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:11PM
Thanks for your reply. I am in no way saying the NHS is perfect, there are many problems and people are failed by the service every day to varying degrees.
My point in general was, I don't think this is unique or because socialized system in the UK. Humans make mistakes and fail, not all treatments are available, passing the buck happens to meet targets, the list goes on. I was using my anecdotes as a counterpoint to the blanket assertion of the original AC that the NHS fails everyone.
However for all the horror stories from the NHS, they don't seem to hold up against the horrors of the U.S. system, which everyone seems to have a story of. I've seen healthcare systems all over the world, and if i was in a top income bracket in the US, I no doubt would think very highly of the system over there. Saying that, one of my US horror stories is about a high income family being essentially bankrupted, after cancer treatments (unsuccessful) of the main breadwinner (supposedly covered by insurance through their employer).
But in answer to your question
From 2012 [theguardian.com]:
While the system may have its flaws, there are still consequences of not providing adequate care (perhaps not enough), and even if you're a doctor or nurse, you're not above the law.
The problem now as i see it, reforms that are happening are not being made to improve the quality of care, they are being made to drive down the cost and enable for-profit corporations to provide more services, but only the bits they can make money on. The government will have to pick up the tab for the rest of it, as it always has. The NHS is not long for this world it feels, and that's not a good thing. As mentioned before, they're getting U.S consultants in to help carve it up for maximum profitability.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:46PM
Excellent reply, that's exactly what I was looking for.
I'm sorry to hear that you're importing the worst part of our medical culture; having businessmen take over hospitals here has been a bigger disaster than their takeovers of the tech sector - at least when HP gets driven into the ground no one dies.
I'm holding out hope that regardless of the system in place the doctors who are healing people for the love of humanity will stick around and keep being motivated for the right reasons. The stats I quoted seemed to put the U.S. and U.K. at about the same level of outcome, and I'd like to take that as evidence that the horror stories we've heard about each others' systems fall within the (unfortunate) norm. Medicine is hard. =(
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday September 25 2014, @01:56AM
Form follows function. Private healthcare in the US has spawned a large industry of medical software. Through the NHS wanting to modernize and computerize and through software houses seeking additional sales, US medical software is now widely deployed in the NHS. This has stratified the NHS in addition facilitating financial settlement between administrative boundaries. Unfortunately, this fails and it has now become routine for parts of the NHS to sue other parts.
1702845791×2