Nurses for Reform Blog

This is a step in the right direction in the reform of UK healthcare provision.  However, the Government has to be more radical than this in its solutions if it wants to create real improvements.  While it is right to enable NHS patients to access higher quality private provision NFR believes that the Government should follow its policy approach to the logical next step.  No britsh hospital should remain in the state sector, all healthcare provision in this country must be put in to the independent sector, both for profit and not-for-profit.

Just as the NHS can fund its patients to go to a few private hospitals to enable politicians to appear to keep some promises, so in the future it must make this opportunity open to all patients by setting the UKs health provision market free to private sector knowhow, investment and quality. An incoming Conservative government should be clear, there will be no government owned and politically controlled hospitals.

Patients First are a fantastic group of people that I met during my recent trip to Washington DC and New York.  They are running a “Hands off our Healthcare” campaign to warn the American people of the dangers of Obamacare.  They are proactive in making TV ads and having a tour bus that is taking speakers to many parts of the US for public meetings.

The team involved in this campaign really understand the problems that will come from more government interference in healthcare and, along with the majority of the American public, do not want to pay the higher taxes that will inevitably result from these reforms, only to have more rationed and regulated healthcare provision and funding.

This is yet one more warning to Americans who think that the money set aside for Comparative Effectiveness in President Obama’s stimulus package is money well spent.

The Nation Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness in the UK (NICE) has again denied  women with breast cancer potentially life saving treatment.  I have said it before and I will say it again, Governments are putting prices on our lives and if the treatments that we need are considered to be too expensive then we are expendable.

There is a common belief amongst Europeans that America has no state funded healthcare.  From 2002 to 2005 when I was living and working in Brussels (the heart of EU) I can’t remember how many times I was told by people working in and around the EU institutions that in America if you don’t have private insurance you will be left to die in the streets!

This is simply not true. Since the 1960’s America has had the state funded and administered systems Medicare, Medicaid and later SCHIP.  I urge my European readers to check out these links for brief explanations of the American state funded healthcare systems.  Even before anything that Obama can add they are costing America a fortune, I was reliably informed by the man who used to run them that their budget is larger than that of the Pentagon.

If Obamacare is adopted Americans will find themselves with organisations such as NICE and with all manner of rationing as we have seen in the UK with the government deciding who it is cost effective to treat and who will be left to die.

This is an excellent website belonging to the Galen Institute, based in Washington DC.  Galen have been campaigning for market oriented reforms in healthcare for the past 15 years and their message is simple.

As their founder Grace-Marie Turner states;

The Galen Institute believes that:

• Consumers and their physicians should have authority and responsibility over health care decisions.

• The vibrant free market will encourage research and innovation and provide better access to new medical technologies.

• A market that supports innovation will lead to lower costs, expanded choice, and increased access to better medical care.

Our task now is to get the politicians to understand this before they make more mistakes with both British and American healthcare.

If the predictions of this research are true that more than half of babies born today in the UK and other wealthy nations will live to 100, then our healthcare systems are going to be in major trouble if they carry on in their current ailing vein.

By definition populations are likely to be greater than they are now and will have increased demands for all healthcare services, especially elderly care, and let’s face it, the NHS cannot even cope with current demand!

To prevent these problems the time for governments to act is now.  Rather than wasting taxpayers money playing with schemes that pay people to lose weight and trying to increase the state’s role in healthcare provision as per Obamacare, governments must learn from past mistakes and realise that the state cannot do it all.  There will never be healthy populations while individuals do not take responsibility for their own health and healthcare provision.

Prescriptive Nanny States have failed to provide even adequate healthcare so far and I see no evidence that they will manage to cope with an increasing elderly population.  Although there is no such thing as a perfect system, NFR believes that it is time that the market is allowed to flourish in healthcare funding and provision, who knows what schemes it may offer, but one thing we do know, if any of them are as bad as the NHS then they will go out of business very quickly.