The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122219 Message #2678117
Posted By: Emma B
12-Jul-09 - 08:28 AM
Thread Name: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
The British national pastime is to complain about our (actually very moderate) weather
A close runner up would be to complain about the state of the National Health Service but, scratch the surface of any of these grouses, and few would want to see the American model in the UK
Although it's a rather long document I would recommend reading
What's good about the NHS and why it matters who provides the service
particularly parts 2 & 3 which deal with funding, risk pooling and risk sharing
"The architects of the NHS recognized that equity in health care could only be achieved by sharing the risks and costs of care across the whole of society from the rich to the poor and from healthy to sick........
It was for this reason the architects of the NHS embedded solidarity and collective provision into the structures for the funding and delivery of care"
Of interest is the section on how markets fragment risk pools by dividing the population into 'winners and losers' as profit is maximised where providers can pick the former and reject the latter
The 'losers' are those with chronic disease or disability or just those on low incomes.