Sociallized medicine's toll in England

By Ethel C. Fenig

Richard Baehr recently vividly showed that socialized medicine in Scotland kills. England shares the British Isles with Scotland; it also shares a belief in socialized medicine. And England also has its share of problems with this belief. For instance, their National Health Service (NHS) just proudly (!) announced,

Almost half of NHS inpatients are receiving treatment within 18 weeks of referral by their GP, according to latest figures.

The Government has set a key target that, by the end of 2008, nobody should wait more than 18 weeks from referral to the start of treatment.

Imagine that! "[F]rom referral to the start of treatment" is now only 18 weeks of often unnecessary painful suffering or over four months of unnecessary just plain waiting in fear.

But even this good (?) news is tempered by

figures, published on Thursday, also show that about one in eight patients are still waiting longer than a year for treatment. [empahsis added]

The NHS Health Minister added

there were eight hospitals that had seen a "small increase" in waiting times last year and admitted there were still challenges in areas like orthopaedics.

Oh.

Baehr's observation about Scotland's socialized medicine's death toll:

Maybe the Democratic candidates for President, all of them calling for a federal model of some sort for universal health care (one that would inevitably require both rationing and price controls, like the British and Scottish model) , can address these unnecessary deaths in one of the European health care utopias, and what makes them think they could do any better.

is applicable for waiting times also. Higher death tolls, increased waiting times do not make for good medicine but are to be expected in government-run programs. The free market system of medicine, of anything, is by nature messy and seemingly disorganized, but despite its admitted flaws, is innovative with more successful outcomes compared with the neat bureaucratic model but inefficient and often dangerous execution of socialized anything.