Most people don't want to have to wade through data to try to choose a hospital, they want the system to ensure that their local one (and access is important for most people, for patients and visitors) is good, i.e. that THEIR hospital is good. It's OUR system, not that of greedy corporations offering some choice, IF you can afford it, and if they can't find an excuse for refusing payment. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
For example, you say:
It's OUR system, not that of greedy corporations offering some choice, IF you can afford it, and if they can't find an excuse for refusing payment.
But I wouldn't let businesses anywhere near the funding or the provision of services. Ever. I have no desire to see the introduction of the profit motive, or necessarily business practices, into health care. I want free access to doctors and to treatment.
Most people don't want to have to wade through data to try to choose a hospital, they want the system to ensure that their local one (and access is important for most people, for patients and visitors) is good, i.e. that THEIR hospital is good.
I would like that my local GP and my local hospital, and every person I have ever been referred to is a good doctor, but they haven't been. I have never had the chance to choose a doctor or a treatment.
I once visited my doctor concerning a relatively simply issue, and was referred to a doctor in a city I had trouble travelling to, simply because that's who they referred to, no other reason. I managed to attend the consultation, but I neither trusted the doctor to treat me, nor was I given the opportunity to make an appointment for treatment. I received a letter a couple of days beforehand telling me my treatment had been scheduled for that Sunday, in the morning! Public transport doesn't run on a Sunday morning, and despite my best efforts to hitch-hike there (I'm not kidding), I never made it. I rang the hospital to say I wouldn't be there, and asked whether they could rearrange, but they simply said that I had forfeited(!!!) my treatment, and that I had to go back to my GP and ask to be referred again. Considering that the initial referral took a year, I never bothered.
So yeah, I would love to be able to choose where I was treated, and the time of my appointment, because I might actually get treated in the future, plus I would be able to meet doctors and refuse them if I didn't trust them. I would feel empowered about health care if I could discuss with others their experiences of a doctor or a treatment and choose for myself. For me, that would be the kind of system that ensured every doctor was good. You don't have to be a market ideologue to believe that, or maybe you do, I don't care. Member of the Anti-Fabulousness League since 1987.
If the government's current policies are allowed to succeed, by the end of this decade the NHS will effectively have disappeared as a national institution providing the most economical high-quality health services in the world, freely and equally to all. The 'NHS' will still exist, but increasingly just as a logo attached to the provision of healthcare by private hospitals and GP surgeries. The services available to patients will have become more and more uneven. People will look back nostalgically to the days of 'postcode rationing' - drugs available to patients in one area being denied to those next door. At least that was in the open, and could be changed by democratic pressure. Soon entire clinical services - for example, mental health or paediatrics - will become unavailable locally, as hospitals drop unprofitable activities in order to survive in the market, and without any opportunity for the public to prevent it. This unevenness will be offset by new opportunities to buy 'superior' or 'enhanced' services through 'co- payments'. Those who can afford it will buy the kind of services that the NHS was created to provide free to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Everyone else will get a 'basic' service, which will decline steadily as the middle class loses interest in it, and good staff flee to better-resourced and less stressful work. If this picture seems far-fetched, it is because government spin and media bias have prevented a clear picture emerging. Most of it has already occurred, or is explicitly planned. Privatisation so far NHS premises are increasingly owned and operated by private corporations. In the case of hospitals this is occurring through the private finance initiative (PH). Of the 100 hospitals promised in the 2000 NHS Plan virtually all will have been procured via the PH ... http://www.health.ed.ac.uk/CIPHP//publications/red_pepper_2006_not_safe__leys.pdf
If the government's current policies are allowed to succeed, by the end of this decade the NHS will effectively have disappeared as a national institution providing the most economical high-quality health services in the world, freely and equally to all.
The 'NHS' will still exist, but increasingly just as a logo attached to the provision of healthcare by private hospitals and GP surgeries. The services available to patients will have become more and more uneven. People will look back nostalgically to the days of 'postcode rationing' - drugs available to patients in one area being denied to those next door. At least that was in the open, and could be changed by democratic pressure. Soon entire clinical services - for example, mental health or paediatrics - will become unavailable locally, as hospitals drop unprofitable activities in order to survive in the market, and without any opportunity for the public to prevent it.
This unevenness will be offset by new opportunities to buy 'superior' or 'enhanced' services through 'co- payments'. Those who can afford it will buy the kind of services that the NHS was created to provide free to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Everyone else will get a 'basic' service, which will decline steadily as the middle class loses interest in it, and good staff flee to better-resourced and less stressful work.
If this picture seems far-fetched, it is because government spin and media bias have prevented a clear picture emerging. Most of it has already occurred, or is explicitly planned.
Privatisation so far NHS premises are increasingly owned and operated by private corporations. In the case of hospitals this is occurring through the private finance initiative (PH). Of the 100 hospitals promised in the 2000 NHS Plan virtually all will have been procured via the PH ...
http://www.health.ed.ac.uk/CIPHP//publications/red_pepper_2006_not_safe__leys.pdf
Cf Pemberton in the diary. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
