A Stitch in Haste

An ad hominem commenter to this post suggested that I know "nothing" about Britain's socialized medicine scheme, the National Health Services.

Oh, I know some things:

NHS trusts throughout the country are making sweeping cuts to services and delaying appointments in an attempt to address their debts before the end of March. Family doctors have been told to send fewer patients to hospital, A&E departments [i.e., emergency rooms] have been instructed to turn people away, and a wide range of routine procedures has been suspended.
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No patients [at York Primary Care Trust] will be given a hospital appointment in less than eight weeks, and none admitted for elective surgery unless they have waited a minimum of 12 to 16 weeks. Those treated quicker will not be paid for.

The trust also announced the immediate suspension of treatments for varicose veins, wisdom teeth, X-rays of the back, operations for carpal tunnel syndrome, bunions, arthroscopy of the knee, and grommets for the ear, among others.

Scarce resources must be rationed. If the rationing is not done by the free market (i.e., by patients, physicians, suppliers and insurers), then it will be done by politicians and bureaucrats. But it will be done.

And if your kid suffers hearing loss because the rationing includes grommets, or if you can't play with her because your back hurts, your wisdom teeth ache or your knee is giving out, well then too bad so sad. Welcome to "universal health coverage."

Are you really so much more afraid of your doctor than your M.P.?

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More:

A leaked copy of the [British] Government's pay and workforce strategy ... suggests that by 2011 there will be a shortage of 14,000 nurses and 1,200 GPs, while there will be a surplus of 16,200 physiotherapists, healthcare scientists and technicians.
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Overall there will be enough doctors, but they will be trained in the wrong ways for the jobs available.
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In a free market, doctors would move to where the work was, or the excess supply of consultants would drive down salaries, enabling more to be employed. But the NHS is dominated by centrally negotiated contracts that allow little such flexibility.

Even in a free market, skilled professionals can't turn on a dime. A criminal defense lawyer can't turn into an estate lawyer overnight, nor a cardiologist into a gynecologist nor a pediatric nurse into an ICU nurse. Central planning, with wage and price controls, political favoritism, diversity quotas and other anti-market agendas, only make matters worse — much much worse.

(Both items via John Ray.)

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Meanwhile:

Smokers who refuse to give up the habit should be denied some types of surgery, a respiratory expert says.

Matthew Peters said denying smokers joint replacement surgery, breast reconstructions and some other types of elective surgery was justified because the operations were more risky and costly when performed on smokers.

"In healthcare systems with finite resources, preferring non-smokers over smokers for a limited number of procedures will deliver greater clinical benefit to individuals and the community," Associate Professor Peters said in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal.

Did I say "socialized medicine"? Sorry, make that "communist medicine." (A rebuttal from — surprise — an American here.)

(Via Wired.)