Welcome back, Dr Crippen

Link: NHS Blog Doctor: A Fresh Start.

The NHS Blog Doctor, who was so much missed during his blog break that rumours of his death circulated, is back. Welcome, sir. He's off to a fine fresh start with the linked post:

Last Saturday, we had a re-union dinner of a group of doctors who have kept in touch since medical school. Some GPs, some consultants, and even a well known medical politician. You would have heard of him. All long-standing friends and all, over the last two years, a constant source of inside-track information. They have been missing their opportunity to vent their spleen through Dr Crippen.

And then, one of those wine-induced dinner-party epiphanies. The Paediatric Professor ... said,

    “You know, if I were suddenly taken ill, I would be terrified to be admitted to a British NHS Hospital.”

We went round the table. Each and every one of the ten doctors present felt the same.

It is time to start again.

Hear hear. Britain's Soviet healthcare system is a national disgrace. Which politician will have the nerve to say so though?

Comments

[Ruthie]

Please forgive my ignorance, but in which specific ways does the British healthcare system differ from the U.S. one?

Both my parents are medical and work for a well-known research hospital. They've tried to explain it to me in generalities, but I'm still missing something.

[Tom Paine]

Ruthie, some Socialist or other may intervene with a rosy view of the situation but here is the truth. The British system is Communist; the patient is entitled to all medical services free at point of use. A modest prescription charge (nowhere near the economic value of the medicines in many cases) is payable for drugs. The whole thing is financed by general taxation ($160 billion of it per year). Absent pricing, demand is controlled by rationing. You wait (and wait and wait) for treatment. The doctors and nurses are not answerable to you as a customer, but to their employer - the State. Generally the service is surly and poor. The hospitals are filthy (you cannot take your custom elsewhere, so why should staff who can't be fired, be bothered?). There are still many barrack-type communal wards, many of them mixed. My mother-in-law in her 70's checked herself out of such a ward and went home (despite having a heart condition) because she was sick of the filthy vagrant male in the next bed exposing himself to her in her hospital bed. She figured she would rather die at home in comfort (I am pleased to report she didn't and accompanied us on our recent trip to New York). I almost punched out the heart surgeon treating my father when he suffered a heart attack, after he stood in the middle of a massive communal ward and told him his prognosis in a raised voice from thirty feet away. Executive summary? It sucks.

[jmb]

I'm really glad to see him back too, for he was one of my regular medblog reads. It was very cruel of that commenter to say that he had died and get everyone upset.