British Doctor Strike, Private vs Public

Britain set for first mass strike by doctors in 40 years | Reuters:

Nothing like a Doctor strike to kick off a new year on a good foot:

Ninety-eight percent of more than 37,000 junior doctors had voted to take part in industrial action, including strikes, in protest against the new employment contract proposed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

 I'm not in the mood to a waste too much time lamenting the rapid decline in the US health system -- anybody that paid any attention, knew it would happen, and it has -- it will continue! But time for a few words I guess.

If you look through this article you will see that Britain has a Public Health System and a Private Health System, and that the Public System is "very popular". At first, this may seem hard to understand, but one needs to ask the question; "Are there more sick people or healthy people"? Fortunately, for a large part of people's lives, their health insurance is like their car insurance -- they don't use it very often, and when they DO it is for smaller claims.

As long as all you need the healthcare service for is "standard stuff", "Post Office Medicine" is just fine (when they aren't striking), and thankfully, for the bulk of the population during most of their lives, that will be all they need. Since half of the people make the median income or below, and they tend to not be taxed very much, they get "free healthcare", it is all that they need, and they don't have to worry about it! So at least half the population LOVES IT -- and no doubt at least 10-20% above that like it too.

So how in the world can a private system continue to work and even expand in the same country if Public Healthcare is so good?

Well, because people get sick -- and sometimes, chronically sick for long periods of time. A woman from England worked in Rochester for years because her mother had emphysema and had watched way to many people die because they could not breath in the public health ward with 5-10 beds in a large room, and not enough staff to cover. We also had people working here that came from Canada for treatment, and it is not unusual at all to see a Canadian license plate when you do through a clinic parking lot.

British life expectancy for males is 79. It is hard to get good data for "white, no criminal record, etc" life expectancy in the US, but this chart shows that for even the top half of the income level in the US, you were looking at 85 to even pushing 90 at the very top. US stats (gun deaths for example) are HEAVILY biased by our largely Democrat controlled big city cesspools of crime and depravity. For "rural / suburban, some college, middle income and over, stable family, etc", our numbers are quite a bit better than we are often led to believe.

But this is changing. The top 10% here, in Canada, in England, in Saudi Arabia, etc **WILL** get the "top care in the world" wherever that ends up being. It MAY stay here -- Mayo is certainly gamely TRYING to be a "Destination Medical Center" -- sometimes it is ALL we hear about here in Rochester, and BILLIONS are being spent on that effort.

However, that is ONLY for the top 10%, and even moving to be just the top 1%. The rest of us are now getting used to DECLINING life expectancies. For those of us in the upper 50% of the income grid we already have declining quality of care at HUGELY higher costs, to the tune of many thousands of $$$$ more each year ... not some whimpy "10-20% rise" as there used to be complaints about. No, now we are into the paying $5-10 THOUSAND vs a few hundred in the pre-BOcare rape times.

Our lives will be shorter, but at least most will enjoy them less, so we can take some solace in that. BO seems to have ushered in the "Suicide Generation" with the rates of middle aged white guys killing themselves at levels that were headline news when the guys dying were gays with AIDs. People really cared about AIDs.

Middle aged white guys with no meaning left in their lives? Let's be honest, nobody even wants to hear about it!

The USSR was a great place for "equality" -- everyone was poor! We also know that it wasn't really "everyone" "The Party" is "more equal than others". The Party Chairman can even just get up on national TV and declare new laws because he feels strongly about it. As one time, Americans would have been outraged -- now, we trudge along with our heads down like so many sheep.

Perhaps North Korea or Iran will settle it for us, but I have a strong feeling that our well deserved exit is going to be longer and excruciatingly painful to watch.

BTW. If you do go off and look at the top linked article, they will mention "anti-social hours", you can Learn about anti-social hours in this link. The short version is "it's hours outside of "8-5" weekdays in England.

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