From the Daily Mail (UK), “Record numbers go abroad for health treatment with 70,000 escaping NHS”:
Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS – with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.
And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.
The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.
Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.
India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.
Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.
Almost all of those who had received treatment abroad said they would do the same again, with patients pointing out that some hospitals in India had screening policies for the superbug MRSA that have yet to be introduced in this country.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the figures were a “terrible indictment” of government policies that were undermining the efforts of NHS staff to provide quality services.
The findings come amid further revelations about the Government’s mishandling of NHS policies, and ahead of official statistics that will embarrass ministers.
Of course, none of this will stop the push for socialized medicine in the US, because if there’s one thing progressives excel at it is convincing themselves that any failure of ideology is attributable to the failure of the person or persons leading it — and that all that is required for Utopian policy to prove truly viable is the right kind of leaders: confident and brilliant (by their own lights) elitist bureaucrats who will resist the corrupting influences that “free market types” are always arguing are inherent to such systems.
Besides: it is better to have tried and failed — and in the process, kill or endanger the health and wellbeing of millions — than never to have tried and failed at all.
(h/t STACLU)
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update: More, from Michelle Malkin.
So S-chap will pay for my hemorrhoid vacation next spring, right? Oh and we’re taking a trip next fall too. Gall stones are so lovely that time of year.
When Michael Moore breaks down and schedules his gastric bypass surgery, do you think he will have it done in LA or Havana?
And, do you think reports like this will matter one bit to the MSM when the next attempt at socialize healthcare rolls around?
Funny that my mother in law was just beating me over the head with an AARP alert about senior Americans going to India for surgery. I said I’d like to see the supporting material as my confidence in AARP is, shall we say, lacking.
I just want to know how many lanes that bypass will have, and whether one of them will be an HOV lane.
On those days when the cup that symbolizes the future seems half empty rather than half full, I envision myself spending my golden years sitting around a free health clinic all day waiting on a doctor to re-up my HBP meds and silently cursing Hillary, because to do so out loud would be to risk seeing a doctor at all. They’ll still call it America, but it won’t really be.
You forgot, “If at first you don’t try and fail, try and fail again.”
I hear this a lot, and, well — you’d think so. Makes quick sense. But listen to what they actually say.
Much more often, the identification with the -ocracy is total — their inner “we” includes the whole class of experts, however discredited by reality (except military experts, biologists, etc. — ideological exclusions from the class) — and so the accusation of failure falls on the people being led, or resisting it: You’re not smart enough, moral enough, free enough of rightist ideology — not the right kind of person — to do what you’re told, so we’ll force you. Or at least try. Again and again, until we have to kill you. Which we will, eventually.
It sounds hyperbolic, but really: There’s no ideological space between an NHS lobby and a gas chamber, nowhere to stand and be for the former and against the latter. Does it matter what color the inside of the slaughterhouse is painted? Not to the cows. Only kllers debate it.
Over at Malkin’s they’re batting around the “lifespan” argument, showing that it’s longer in the U.K. than in the U.S.
I’ll just remind those who didn’t get the memo: This is the number you get when you average the age at which people die, regardless of the cause.
If you factor out deaths by homicide and auto accidents, we in the U.S. have the longest lifespan. And if you look at the cancer survivor rates, we’re head and shoulders ahead of the pack.
It helps to not have to wait 6 months to start chemo.
“…with 70,000 escaping NHS”
That’s obviously untrue. Just because they’re getting their health care elsewhere doesn’t mean they aren’t paying into the system. Unless they stop paying taxes, they can’t escape the government program.
Interesting – those 70,000 means quite a lot more than the millions of Americans, mostly because those people are, as Sobek notes, still paying into the system. Additionally, they would not normally ‘pay’ in the sense that Americans would – take it or leave it, sickness, health, etc. They still pay the same amount in their taxes. Americans go to save money. This reflects the unrestrained costs of major surgery here. (But not poorness of quality of healthcare.) The Britons go because their care SUCKS. They’re willing to pay MORE (instead of less) to get better care.
This goes without saying.
What I was getting at was the post-totalitarian apologias. Those killings wouldn’t have been necessary had the really really really brilliant and charismatic leader been there to convince the dullards to keep in lockstep and do as they’re told.
So it’s a double indictment, but the indictment of the proles was a given. Barely worth mentioning, really.
“If you factor out deaths by homicide and auto accidents, we in the U.S. have the longest lifespan.”
So you’re saying that our privately-run healthcare system leads the world in lifespan, but our government-run bureaus of motor vehicles are churning out crappy drivers? I refuse to believe it.
The longer you live, the greater your chances of dying. It’s a quagmire.
Thirty years from now, I’m going to be fighting against the Federal Health Workers’ Union in an effort to make Health Vouchers available for those of us unfortunate enough to live in low-performing Hospital Districts.
And people wonder why I refuse a healthful diet and exercise…
“Health tourist” is about as condescending as it gets really. That obnoxious little phrase started in reference to elective surgery and now it includes “major heart surgery.”
It’s a handy little phrase to make it sound like it’s a rich people thing, when it’s mostly just people who don’t want to die just yet.
That’s not important, hf. What’s important is that The State figures their time has come. If we allow people to make their own decisions about life and death, pretty soon they’ll want to decide on their own careers, or make their own education decisions, or raise their own children as they see fit.
That way lies madness!
“If you factor out deaths by homicide and auto accidents, we in the U.S. have the longest lifespan.”
If you use the EU standard for infant deaths, it’s even better. Preemies who don’t make it don’t count and no babies who have been treated with “heroic” measures are counted (makes sense – in the EU, “savings” have been implemented in that respect for a long time).
Looks like people go all over the world for this stuff:
#4 Rob– You’d have an easier time blocking the Pacific Coast Highway with a cherrybomb than you would closing off that gut.
“Looks like people go all over the world for this stuff:”
And sometimes they don’t:
http://tinyurl.com/3ym9t9
Healthcare pron. It’s a you know it when you see it thing, but a good test is if the story is just as good whether the guy lives or dies.
It may be healthcare pron, whatever. I want andy and his pals to think about the government being the deciders of whether someone’s live is worth saving. I want him to consider that if HillaryCare v1.0 had passed, right now Bush and Cheney would be making those decisions. Under HillaryCare v1.0, if the little girl and her Daddy did that in this country they would be arrested and prosecuted.
Yes, it’s a good point you have, but the British press has greased the skids of socialism even more than George Soros I think. They are not good people is my impression.
“Thicko-thicko” would have been a better title for this rubbish article.
A small lesson the on the British national press for you guys. The Daily Mail, like its counterpart The Daily Express, is a right-wing xenophobic hate rag aimed at the lower middle classes who didn’t go to college and have a reading age of 12. The Mirror, The Star, and The Sun, are tits and sport pleb sheets aimed at lower classes with a reading age of 8. If you insist on quoting from any of these comics, as being an authoritative source for “news”, then you will be rightly sniggered at here in the UK where such publications are regarded with disdain. Whilst some of these publications might reinforce your existing prejudices, they carry absolutely no weight at all in serious discussion of political issues and you should be aware of this before quoting from them and showing yourselves up as naive. Stick to the quality press if you want to re-use opinion – its more credible.
In other words, The Guardian, comrade?
Englishman: So they’re lying when they say Brits go overseas for healthcare in huge numbers?
Funny, that’s not what the BBC says.
Oh, I’m sorry, did you have a point?