WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND EVENTUALLY

Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday proposed a radical reorganization of England’s health care system, introducing legislation that would hand responsibility for most of the country’s health budget to its 42,000 general practitioners and, his political opponents say, open the door to private competition that could threaten the foundations of socialized care.


Mr. Cameron argues that the bill, said to be the biggest overhaul of the National Health Service since it was founded in 1948, is essential to increase efficiency and allow doctors, patients and localities more control of how the health budget is spent.

The bill would allow general practitioners to commission services from “any willing provider,” which the government says would encourage efficiency and quality, as providers competed for business.

Under the government’s plan, some $127 billion a year — about 80 percent of the total health care budget — would be handed directly to the country’s 42,000 general practitioners, who would join together into consortia that would negotiate to buy treatment from hospitals and specialists. The 151 bodies that currently make such spending decisions, known as primary care trusts, would be abolished, as would another layer of bureaucracy, 10 regional groups known as Strategic Health Authorities.

The government argues that the plan will cut waste, allow patients more autonomy over their treatment and give doctors and localities, rather than bureaucrats, more direct control of the system. Like other health care systems around the world, the N.H.S., which provides treatment free at the point of service, has struggled to keep up with rising costs and increased demand.

Dr. Michael Dixon, chairman of the N.H.S. Alliance, which supports clinicians’ ability to commission health care, said it was inevitable that the proposals would provoke opposition.

“Giving power to frontline clinicians and their patients is bound to upset those with vested interests, such as some of the more centralist senior N.H.S. managers who are used to ruling the roost,” Dr. Dixon said.

One of the plan’s boldest components is the pledge that patients will now get to choose their doctors, their hospitals and their treatments — a radical proposal for a service in which patients can now sometimes wait months for specialist care.

Cameron Seeks Vast Changes in England's Health Service
The New York Times
January 20, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/europe/20britain.html

So let's review.

We were sold on ObamaCare using the British plan as an example of an icon of Europian socialized medicine. We were going to eliminate waste and control costs using their example. We were also assured by Emporer O'Kenya that freedom of choice would not be compromised.

Britian is now proposing to go to a system more like the one we're dumping, in order to elimiate waste, control costs, eliminate long waits for care delivery and allow freedom of choice.

And this story, for the record, is not in The New American. It's from the New York Times.

Still think ObamaCare is a good idea?

Note the paragraphs I have emphasized.

"Giving power to physicians and patients" is viewed as a bad thing. Letting the consumer and the provider decide what is best for the consumer is bad. Instead, let's let the government decide. Isn't that the ObamaCare knock on our current system-that the payor has too much authority?

The plan's "boldest component" is allowing the patients choice.

Imagine that!

A patient, actually allowing to choose their doctor, a relationship that is very personal and intimate. How utterly revolutionary of the British to suggest such a thing. That would almost be like a free market!

And finally the last sentence-that the wait time for care can be months.

In our American utopia of twenty-four hour groceries, drive-through restaurants and liquor stores and retail outlets open until midnight (not to mention at three a.m. on Black Friday), do you really think adding a several month wait time is going to go over well?

Instead of letting Obama and his cronies run our health care (we've seen how they do it with other government functions and it ain't pretty), we should probably be turning to NetFlix.

Now there's a business that runs well-IN SPITE OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE!