A Stitch in Haste

Yesterday I noted that Britain's socialized medicine scheme, the NHS, somehow believes that "universal health care" does not include maternity wards and that women in labor are may soon be told to just stay home and call a midwife.

Well, if "universal health care" doesn't include a fully-trained obstetrician, then why should it include a fully-trained nurse either?

Standards of care are under threat from underqualified nurses and health workers, experts said today.

Nurses in other countries have to be qualified to degree-level but just 4% of UK nurses have a degree, they said.
...
Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, professor Linda Shields, from the University of Hull, and professor Roger Watson, from the University of Sheffield, said US studies showed death rates were lower in hospitals where nurses had bachelor or higher degrees.
...
The professors also argued that nurses were being replaced by less qualified staff.

Health care socialists like to lie about how the U.S. supposedly has, e.g., worse infant mortality rates than countries with "universal health care." But at least we have real nurses here, and real nurses save lives. Go figure.

Of course, no system, whether fully private, semi-private of fully socialist, is going to be able to give everyone all the unlimited "nursing" that they might want. Nursing services are a scarce good and must therefore be rationed, like all goods and services -- including all "health care services" -- must be rationed.

Opponents of socialized medicine are willing to concede this metaphysical truth and proceed accordingly. Health care socialists are not. And the distinction can be lethal.

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Guess what other aspect of "universal health care" in Britain is turning out not to be so universal:

Patients needing NHS dental treatment before the end of the financial year may not be able to get it, the Department of Health has said.

Some dentists have already exhausted their budgets for 2006-07 and will have no money to treat NHS patients until the end of March.

The Department of Health blamed the dentists, saying that some had been "speeding through their work" rather than spending more time with patients. Such dentists, it suggested, needed help. "The local NHS is working with these dentists to help improve the service they provide," it said.

Read that last paragraph again: Dentists "speeding through their work" (i.e., trying to be efficient and to provide as much service to as many patients as possible) are "the problem." Dentists are to be "persuaded" to work less -- in the name of "universal" health care. Remind me again how "the people" are more important than "the budget" when government runs health care? Meanwhile, other parts of the NHS budget have also been exhausted until the end of March.

More:

This is the second problem to hit NHS dentistry in as many weeks. The Government overestimated the money that would be paid to dentists by patients, who pay a proportion of treatment costs. Dentists are seeing more patients who are exempt from charges than was expected, so income is down.

So even a "Utopian" single-payer universal health care system has to worry about income, "the bottom line" and basic economics? And how else are they going to achieve that but by rationing the services they provide (i.e., running their service like a business -- a "cold, heartless" business)?

(Via John Ray.)