Now, about that unfolding, slow-motion disaster occurring on Obama's watch. No, silly, not the Gulf oil spill - we're talking ObamaCare.
Millions of patients face losing NHS care as bosses prepare to axe treatments to make £20billion of savings by 2014, a top doctor has warned.
Among procedures being targeted by health trusts are hernias, joint replacements, ear and nose procedures, varicose veins and cataract surgery.
Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, warned NHS bosses wanted 'wholesale reductions in budgets'.
He said primary care trusts - which commission care - are already compiling lists of 'low value' operations that would no longer be provided.
These include hip replacements for obese patients and some operations for hernias and gallstones. Procedures for varicose veins, ear and nose problems including grommets in children are also not funded in some areas.
Dr Porter said it was wrong to impose blanket bans on such procedures when some patients might benefit.
Of course, "wrong" is subject to interpretation when you bow before the false god of "controlling costs". And how is that working, by the way?
Patients could find it harder to get into hospital under plans from the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, which advises on drugs and procedures to be funded.
Chief executive Andrew Dillon said a review of clinical guidelines will be finished by the end of the year, which will include 'evidence of overuse' of treatments to 'see what the prospects (for savings) might be'.
Nice will also push through 150 changes to medical practice aimed at saving money, from reducing prescribing of antibiotics by GPs to delaying some prostate cancer tests.
A Department of Health spokesman said: 'Savings will be implemented in a way that does not affect the quality of services and all savings will be reinvested back in the NHS.'
Saving implemented by cutting back on services, ostensibly "quality of life" services to be reinvested back into the NHS... to improve quality.
This is the sort of illogical tail-chasing one has to buy into with fanatical and religious fervor when one attempts to defend socialized medicine.
To not see "rationing" as determined by others, is to be completely delusional.
The post title refers to the near-daily drum beat we read of the sky-rocketing costs of "free" socialized medicine and the resulting imposition of mandatory cuts in services as determined by "others", aka, not "you".
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1 comment:
I'm coming around to the view that all of this political posturing and yelling is essentially pointless. In the end, you will pay for what you recieve. In the case of the Euros and specifically this one of the NHS, you can only postpone the day of reckoning, you can't change the nature of mathematics and business permanently.
Perhaps a better formulation would be to say that politics is more education than anything else. We're trying to get others to wake up to the nature of the problem.
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