NHS overburdened and overcrowded (British Socialised Healthcare)

Why do so many Americans think the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is only ‘England’?
Any American who conflates the two ought not to pontificate about the National Health Service but learn the truth and also concentrate on what happens to the twenty million or so Americans without health insurance.
I imagine health care in America is expensive because the system rips off the people.

 

You have no idea what you are talking about. You know zero about our tax system, you know zero about the NHS, you know a whole bunch about attacking immigrants which exactly why you start threads like this.

Time to ignore you.

 

Yet another example of those on the Left being unable to handle and ignoring opinions they disagree with.

Math and logic are too overwhelming to deal with, I guess.

 

Because England played a very important role in America's origin, so Americans want to be sure to use a name that will let other Americans know that the place they are talking about is the same place where the U.S. had their origins, and where the English language comes from. Most Americans don't have a very wide knowledge of countries in other parts of the world. If we said "United Kingdom", many Americans would ask "United Kingdom of what?"
The "United Kingdom" did not even exist in name as an official entity until 1800, after the U.S. had severed ties to Britain. Americans will know of "England" and "the British" from school history lessons but more likely will not be familiar with the name "United Kingdom". And writing out the full official name for the United Kingdom would just be too lengthy and complicated.

England is pretty much the heart of the U.K. so the two are largely equivalent, from the point of view of an American, even though they may not be exactly the same.
There was one survey that found 69% of Americans could not even locate "the United Kingdom" on a world map.

 

Poor excuse from anybody who wishes to pontificate about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Get it right or say nothing.

 

Which suggests Americans have a shitty education related to world geography.

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate NHS’s.

Amount of tax deducted for the NHS is dependent on income.

My last comment to you. I am going to ignore you because your information regarding the NHS is totally erroneous, you provided no links, and you are wholly ignorant of the UK’s taxation system related to the NHS.

There is no point discussing anything with uninformed people who can’t even form an opinion about the NHS because they know nothing about it and rather than educate themselves they resort to the usual stupid ‘left’ comments and insults.

You are debating from a position of ignorance.

 

"The United Kingdom provides public healthcare to all permanent residents, about 58 million people. Healthcare coverage is free at the point of need, and is paid for by general taxation. About 18% of a citizen's income tax goes towards healthcare, which is about 4.5% of the average citizen’s income. Overall, around 8.4 percent of the UK's gross domestic product is spent on healthcare"
source: The UK Health Care System, Josh Chang, Felix Peysakhovich, Weimin Wang, Jin Zhu

"As of 2021, the standard [national insurance contribution] rate for employees is 12% of earnings between £9,568 and £50,270, and 2% on earnings above £50,270. For self-employed individuals, the rate is 9% on earnings between £9,568 and £50,270, and 2% on earnings above £50,270."
NIC Rates: Exploring the Different Bands and Levels - FasterCapital

"The majority of NHS funding comes from general taxes, and a smaller proportion (20%) comes from national insurance, which is a payroll tax paid by employees and employers."
England | International Health Care System Profiles | Commonwealth Fund

"The most current list, for the 2018/19 tax year, shows that 20.2% of a person's combined income tax and National Insurance tax went toward health care. The average full-time salary in the UK for 2019 was £36,611."
source: View your Annual Tax Summary - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

Americans have a very different definition of left and right. They conflate communism, socialism and Marxism, as one thing, relating it to money rather than the way people’s share resources and live together.
What might be extreme right wing politically in a lot of countries in Europe many Americans probably think is Communism.
On this board if you challenge anything right wing Americans post, very often your facts are dismissed out of hand and you get accused as being an agent for the Chinese government.

 

Who spends more of their gross domestic product on Health Care? — United States.

Who is more satisfied with their health care system? — United Kingdom.

Who reports that cost of health care is a barrier to access? United States.

How much does it cost an uninsured woman to give birth in the United States — $13,000 to $14,000

How much does it cost a woman to give birth in the UK — $0.

Average cost of a visit to the ER with no insurance is $1200 or more in the USA. In the UK, if you are visiting the UK as a tourist and you go to the equivalent A&E for care, they won’t charge you anything.

The United States has one of the highest costs of healthcare in the world. In 2021, U.S. healthcare spending reached $4.3 trillion, which averages to about $12,900 per person. By comparison, the average cost of healthcare per person in other wealthy countries is only about half as much.

Why does a vial of insulin cost $99 in the USA and $8 in the UK?

Realistically, the USA healthcare system ain’t so great.

 

The article doesn't say anything about more people having been added, it simply says the system is currently understaffed, and the truth is that it has been underfunded for at least 15 years (underfunding leads to understaffing).

Yes, because people just LOVE sitting in hospital waiting rooms in order to have procedures they don't need. That's what you think, right?

Government workers get lot of "free" stuff, and sometimes they don't even realize others are paying for it.

 

When you have more people, you need more funding.

The amount of funding the NHS is getting now would probably be enough for the population 20 years ago.

And no, adding more people doesn't necessarily increase government revenue in proportion to the increase in population.

 

You are trying hard to make it about "adding more people", but your article simply does not say that.

UK Population is growing at 0.3% per year, which is considered low. Average growth rate is 0.83% (0.5% in US and Canada).

 

It doesn't need to (as already explained in post #17). I am simply pointing out a possible connection and trying to get people to do some critical thinking on their own.

It's like you are so accustomed to having your ideas fed to you from news articles that you won't believe there could be a connection between anything unless the opinion in a news article tells you.

 

It looks like the cost for a woman to give birth in a hospital in the U.K. is not cheap either.

"The minimum that you can expect to be charged for maternity care resulting in a birth is around £7000 (as of 2021)."
Right to NHS services - Birthrights

(This is of course for non-permanent residents but the society is still paying for that)

It's true that many hospitals in the U.S. price gouge patients who don't have insurance. Oftentimes the hospital bills the insurance company half of what they try to charge patients without insurance.
I think at least 35% this comes down to two things: The government-mandated requirement to provide emergency treatment to non-paying patients, including illegal immigrants (government only reimburses the hospital for part of the cost). Admittedly this becomes a little less of a problem in the U.K. when every person is required to pay a share of money for medical care.
And then the lawsuits in many parts of the U.S. with ridiculously excessive payouts, which have to be paid for in the form of higher prices for patients. I think in the U.K. there's a tendency for judges to allow plaintiffs in lawsuits to get less money because the money is coming from a vital government program.
These are both a little complicated issues. (If you want to get into these issues, start a separate thread and you can leave the link here)

Another trick the NHS uses to lower costs is bringing in lots of foreign doctors from other countries. This has several trade-offs as well. (Again, a separate discussion)

I don't mean to throw lots of complexity at this to obscure the issue, but there are all sorts of trade-offs, and I don't believe the true full costs are entirely reflected in the upfront price of medical care.

 

So……Let’s look at some baseline comparisons shall we?
life expectancy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Oh! Dear - look at the UK just under 81 years - took a hit with COVID but recovering meanwhile USA…….
How about Infant/child Mortality?

UK still doing better
Now the big one - Maternal mortality

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&...d=0CBMQ3YkBahcKEwiIgdiph7KDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQDA

 

Why don't we see any African or Latin American nations on that graph?

Why out of the 12 nations shown on that graph are 10 of them white countries (majority white English-speaking or Western European) and 2 Northeast Asian (Japan and Korea)?

Could the fact that the U.S. has much more diversity than those other countries having something to do with it? (Just a thought)
Slightly over 50% of women of reproductive age are non-white in the U.S.

 

Because most were looking at OECD countries but feel free to add those countries if it makes you feel better about having the most expensive healthcare system in the world

 

Part of this is due to a problem of excessively high costs in the U.S.
But the other part of it, Bowerbird, is something I have explained to you many times but you seem to ignore or never remember. The U.S. is less homogenous economically and population-wise. That seems to result in high spending and poor health outcomes in the statistics. But these are combined statistics. The same effect would exist if you combined a high income country and a low income country into the same statistics.
The issue is that health outcome does not have a linear relationship with spending. So if one part of the population spends more money and another part of the population spends less, it appears to be less good health outcome per the amount of money spent, for the combined population.

It's as if the U.S. were an advanced high income country living a parallel existence side by side together with a much lower income country.
Just look at all the ghetto neighborhoods in the U.S. that seem almost "Third World", if you don't believe me.

 

If you want to talk about how to fix the problems in the U.S. healthcare system, look at this thread: How to fix the U.S. healthcare system (podcast) (Apr 6, 2023 )

Some people seem to think if there's a problem, the only way to fix it is to have the government take over the system entirely.
That seems rather extreme to me. Like a patient complaining to the doctor about constant shooting pain in their leg and their doctor suggests replacing the whole leg with a bionic one.
(Some might call this a "jumping the gun" fallacy, or hasty diagnosis)

And it seems simple-minded. Because just saying that "the government should take it over" is a lot easier than actually getting into the complex details of how to solve the many specific problems. (Or the specific areas government should take more control over and precisely how to do it)
I fear much of the push and inclination coming from the Left is just mentally lazy thinking. Thinking we'll just hand the problem over to government and they'll solve all our problems, somehow. Since government is "all-wise" and beneficent.

 

Maybe you're not informed, but the UK has left the EU not long ago. And with this lots of immingrants have been forced to leave the country, just as the Tories intended. Many of them had been working in the NHS, mostly in lower-wage jobs.

They are missing now, and you're telling me, it is the Labour Party to blame?

Btw

 

This comes back to the question of whether immigration improves the ratio of caretakers to patients in the NHS, or hurts it.

I'll grant that there may be some truth to what you are saying.

If you want to continue the debate, you can do so here, or start a new thread.
the problem with bringing in foreign workers to take care of the old (posted in Economics & Trade, Nov 9, 2017 )

 

Yes, we could (and probably will) discuss this aspect in a separate thread, but in this one we discuss whether the single payer system of the UK is less efficient than the system of maximising shareholder value in the USA.

 

It's more complicated than that. Traditionally, in the 1950s, most hospitals in the US were run by Christian non-profit organizations. Hospitals were seen more as a work of charity. They still charged patients money, of course, but not enough to earn much of a profit. And under this model, there was little question about providing care to patients who obviously could not afford it.
But it also should be considered that the care in hospitals in the 1950s was much less extensive than it is today. Medical technology has greatly advanced, and with that expensive procedures.

Non-profit hospitals have not been keeping up with the increase in the American population, and in recent years there is the very disturbing trend of religious non-profit hospitals going bankrupt. That leaves a for-profit hospital to replace them, or in some cases with the closest hospital being a farther travel distance away.

The statistics that I have seen suggest that religious non-profit hospitals offer better value, better price to quality of care ratios, than for-profit hospitals. (Although to be fair, part of that might be because non-profit hospitals often are given certain tax exemptions, like not having to pay property tax or sales tax)
For-profit HMOs (health maintenance organization) can offer even cheaper prices but have developed a bad reputation for often not providing quality care.

 

How many millions of Americans can’t afford health insurance?
I read somewhere it was about twenty million.
America as a concept or nation does not seem to have a healthcare system, rich people have a healthcare system.

 

Not only those who are uninsured get broke with a c-section while giving birth. But when it comes to greater issues even well earning people go bancrupt when they recieve a $400,000 or even higher bill.

One of three Gofundme-pleas is medical related, and medical debts are reason #1 for US-citizens going bankrupt. The healthcare system of the USA is working as intended: A well oiled profit machine.