I had the chance to watch some British television last week and came accross some interesting things. First, the minister in charge of the National Health Service in the UK was responding to US criticisms. He stated that there were no waiting lists in the UK for specialist referrals or hospitalization. He was then forced to say that the official waiting lists did not start until someone had been in the referral queue for 18 weeks! Then it came out that there was at least 250,000 on the over 18 week list. There was also another story that explained because of the UKs liberal immigration policies, UK citizens between the ages of 19 to 25 have a 23% unemployment rate because all the entry level jobs are taken by immigrants. They have their own "cash for clunkers program" and the result is all the government money is being sent overseas instead of their own economy.
I wonder if we can make it possible for our voters to watch British television?
2 comments:
Good idea Throckmorton. They should force this administration to watch.
"the referral queue for 18 weeks!"
I wonder how THAT works if there is a patient with a chronic condition that needs follow-up at specific times?
I've heard that even if a patient is diagnosed with colon or breast, etc. CA..they still have to WAIT for the surgery and then it's too late because it metastasized. And then they won't pay for the *expensive* possibly life saving CA drug. And then in our program there would be all those calculations with age, probabilities, etc deciding if someone is worthy.
And obviously physicians and nurses sell out... but in all probability as you and others have so often pointed out... it will be some non medical person making medical decisions and their loyalty would be administrative. We have that now. Although..my company good. I think HMO's are more the problem.
Frankly, I don't get why there has to be this massive undertaking when they don't even know what the heck they are doing. greta was funny last night.. but poignant while reading the bill, demonstrating how difficult it is to understand. No wonder congress and senate didn't READ it!
But then don't shove it down our throats!
That is the most egregious thing to me... that these people in charge don't even know what is in these monumental bills they are passing or the long term effects.
And on top of that try to rush them through!
And really..what the heck is a czar in this country? I heard one of them in charge of the FCC communications wants to tax conservative talk radio 250 million.
may not be a hard figure but (this is my interpretation) because conservative talk radio is so successful... they want them to pay these high taxes..which will go to fund the lessor successful liberal talk radio.
Since when should people be penalized for their success?
The additional and serious problem with this is that the conservative stations won't be able to afford that and thus would not stay on the air.
So..it's really another way to eliminate the opposition.
Don't know how old you are and what you remember... but I was 15 in 1970 and in our house..my uncle always had the nightly news on.
back then..every night..you saw body bags of American soldiers. i remember a lot of green on the news..I guess film of the conflict.And protests were aired all the time. we only got the liberal feed back then. (I blame the media, Jane Fonda types and weak congress and senate for losing that war and actually causing more deaths by prolonging it)
Thanks to conservative radio and now Fox news and even some CNN programming... the other side is being presented.
They say you always remember your first time and I will never forget the first time I heard Rush on the radio. :)
We were all in the car, and had just gotten on the parkway heading down the shore on vacation, when I stumbled on him while looking for music on the radio. I couldn't believe what this man was saying but it made so much sense! And we listened to that station all the way down and all the way home. :)
P.S. Sorry off track but I will just add this. The head of North Vietnam wrote in his memoirs that he thought they were going to lose the war... but then they saw all the political unrest in this country and he thought if they could just hang on.. we would weaken and they would win.
Hey Throckmorton... would you ever want to submit a surgical post to SurgeXperiences?
You could write a post about anything pertaining to surgery. You've got a lot of interesting posts and it would be neat to read about your OR experience during a surgery or any facet of the surgical experience as seen through your eyes.
Maybe it's not your thing ... but should you feel so inclined..I think you'd have a lot of interested readers. :)
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