Sunday, July 7, 2013

Happy Birthday To Great Britain's Increasingly Scandalous National Health Service

Forbes ^ | July 5, 2013 | Scott W. Atlas, MD

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) turns 65 years old this week.

Despite its much heralded presence in Britain’s health care, the problems of the NHS are severe, notorious, and increasingly scandalous in the most fundamental attributes of any health care system: access and quality.
Waits for care are shocking in the NHS, frequently exposed by British media reports, and long proven by facts, yet they go virtually unreported in the U.S. For instance, in 2010, about one-third of England’s NHS patients deemed ill enough by their GP waited more than one additional month for a specialist appointment. In 2008-2009, the average wait for CABG (coronary artery bypass) in the UK was 57 days. And the impact of this delayed access was obvious.
Access to medical care is so poor in the NHS that the government was compelled to issue England’s 2010 “NHS Constitution” in which it was declared that no patient should wait beyond 18 weeks for treatment – four months – after GP referral.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...

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