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| wraper:
--- Quote from: AndyBeez on November 22, 2022, 09:54:55 pm ---I guess us Brits should apologise/apologize to our American compatriots who are thinking, what the feck is a national health service anyway? The answer is, it's like Medicare, but burns a lot more money. The British national health service is a graveyard of huge IT projects that burnt billions on consultants and delivered nothing. That's managment consultants, not medical ones. The notion of using VR, AI and cybernetics does have it's place, such as in the 'virtual OR'. Reality check, a robot still cannot replace the 'hands in guts' dexterity of a surgeon. But this story sure makes a good ten minute sound bite for the UK's rich kid ex-Goldman Sachs banker Prime Minister. --- End quote --- LOL, I think you have no clue how bad US healthcare is. It's spending way more money than NHS, yet there is no free or affordable healthcare at all. It's extremely expensive, including super expensive drugs. Effing insulin costs >$1000 per month, and becomes 10 times cheaper once you cross the border to Canada or Mexico, and it will be exactly the same stuff from the same manufacturer. It's so stupid some people cannot afford it, thus are rationing it or don't use at all and then die. Prime time on TV is full of healthcare insurance ads though. And if you don't have one, pray god you don't ever need to be hospitalized. Not unheard of people going bankrupt and losing their house after visiting a hospital. Not that insurance will necessarily save you. They will probably find some pre-existing condition or your illness will be excluded in a fine print. |
| SiliconWizard:
Of course this would have to be corrected for respective cost of living, otherwise the raw figures don't make much sense. But admittedly the about top 10 would have relatively similar cost of living so they are comparable. (The rest, not so much.) You're mentioning one reason for the huge US expenses being the cost of drugs. That's an interesting point - do we actually have more detailed figures for how health expenses are distributed? (Such as cost of drugs, wages of healthcare professionals, cost of infrastructure, etc.) |
| wraper:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 22, 2022, 10:31:20 pm ---Of course this would have to be corrected for respective cost of living, otherwise the raw figures don't make much sense. But admittedly the about top 10 would have relatively similar cost of living so they are comparable. (The rest, not so much.) You're mentioning one reason for the huge US expenses being the cost of drugs. That's an interesting point - do we actually have more detailed figures for how health expenses are distributed? (Such as cost of drugs, wages of healthcare professionals, cost of infrastructure, etc.) --- End quote --- The difference with other largest spenders it that their healthcare is either free or cheap (especially in comparison with US). So while spending much more, US is doing much worse. |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: AndyBeez on November 22, 2022, 09:54:55 pm ---I guess us Brits should apologise/apologize to our American compatriots who are thinking, what the feck is a national health service anyway? The answer is, it's like Medicare, but burns a lot more money. The British national health service is a graveyard of huge IT projects that burnt billions on consultants and delivered nothing. --- End quote --- You are talking complete bollocks. Utter, complete bollocks. And while NHS Digital has had it's fair share of bad projects, most of those are historical. The current Digital team is rather good - think the NHS website for instance - or the integration with things like the COVID app. The parts that are rubbish are the bits that are private, like linking with GP surgeries for appointments and the like, but that's a far more difficult problem to square as GP surgeries are run at arms length from the NHS for historical reasons predating the NHS. Just this morning I had to call my GP surgery and got stuck in a loop on the phone system due to their buggy equipment and software... but that's a small private surgery for you. The NHS is far from perfect, but it is a pretty efficient system for the outcomes it provides. The NHS is however going to have to reckon with the aftereffects of COVID, a population which is more unwell (long COVID, other post illness effects, depression/anxiety/etc.) and with staffing shortages, it will be a rough decade. It needs more money, because the population needs treatment. Yet it'll still provide excellent value for money compared to the madness that is the American healthcare system. |
| AndyBeez:
Again, I apologize to our non UK forum members for the rantings over such a parochial subject. Indeed, the US healthcare system is a disaster. I remember an American coworker telling me how much he was spending on health insurance for his family. I thought the figure quoted was per year. Nope, that's per month. Ouch. btw, the UK's NHS Covid tracking app (latest ios and android versions supported only) was a 100% clusterf*k. You'll be able to read more about who burnt the money on this project when the UK Covid Inquiry reports sometime in 2023/24...27? |
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