Socialized Medicine

Scott W. Atlas writes that the US is moving towards socialized medicine at the same time Europe is realizing what a massive failure it has been (as are all socialist enterprises once they run out of the initial confiscated wealth):

The disgraceful state of the health system for America's military veterans has finally been exposed. In our Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, America’s honored veterans suffer or even die due to shamefully long waits before receiving important medical care. Based on an internal audit ordered by the White House, the Associated Press reported that more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for their appointments 90 days after requesting them. Bureaucrats apparently covered up the facts, and some staff even falsified records to earn personal bonuses.  

Americans should recognize the importance of these new revelations. These scandals serve to vividly remind everyone of the very personal consequences of allowing the government to fully control healthcare. But this should not have been a surprise. While such waits are otherwise unheard of in the healthcare system of the United States, they in fact typify the very systems held up as models for US reforms by supporters of ObamaCare. Even though the facts have been thoroughly documented by governments running nationalized health systems and in the most renowned scientific and medical journals, it is puzzling that the shocking waits for care in those systems—whether for specialist appointments, heart surgery, stroke treatment, diagnostic scans, or cancer care—go virtually unreported by the mainstream US media.

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Barbara Kelley

While Americans are shocked about the revelations about the VA hospitals, the failure of government-run healthcare has already been proven all over the globe. Last year, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), the paradigm of government-controlled healthcare, turned 65 years old and officially entered senior citizenship. As opposed to the celebration that might have been expected, headlines in the British press documented scandalous patient care, shameful waiting lists, catastrophic hospital practices, and financial debacles.

Access to medical care has been so poor for so long in the NHS that the government was compelled to issue England’s 2010 “NHS Constitution” in which it was declared that no patient should wait beyond 18 weeks for treatment—four months—after a referral from a general practitioner.  While NHS England officially states that the laughably long leash of 18 weeks to initiate treatment is being met, as of February 2014 more than 50,000 patients had waited more than those 18 weeks after GP referral for treatment to begin.  In Scotland, as reported in May 2014, more than 10% of patients were still waiting more than 18 weeks for their treatment to begin–4 months after being referred for treatment by their doctors. 

Even more shocking is the recent decree from the Comptroller and Auditor General of England’s Department of Health: “NHS England introduced zero tolerance of any patient waiting more than 52 weeks (for treatment after doctor referral), for which trusts face a mandatory fine of £5,000 for each patient doing so.” Yes, waiting more than one full year for treatment is apparently a possibility in the NHS.

Despite the UK government’s repeated laws and decrees, more patients than ever before are now on waiting lists, and the NHS is failing to deliver on its most basic promises to the taxpayers. In April 2014, hospital waiting lists soared to their highest point since 2006, with 2,993,108 patients in England on waiting lists for treatment. Figures for last July showed that 508,555 people in London alone were waiting for operations or other treatment to begin—the highest total for at least five years. Almost 60,000 more patients were waiting for treatment at the capital’s 34 NHS hospitals than one year previous.

In October 2013, the median wait time in England’s NHS for hospital inpatients—patients sick enough to require hospital admission—was a staggering 9 weeks to begin treatment, a full 2 months after doctor diagnosis and referral. For outpatients, median waits were also markedly higher in October 2013 than a year earlier. Paul Smith, a senior research analyst at the Nuffield Trust health think tank, said to the Guardian "this is hardly surprising. Waiting times are a good barometer of the general health of the NHS.”

Read the rest here.