Is Britain’s National Health Service Near the Breaking Point?
My, this has been kept awfully quiet in the US:
Thousands join NHS cuts protest
24/09/06Organisers of a demonstration aimed at protesting against cuts in the NHS were taken by surprise when thousands of people turned up to join a march and rally.
Unison and the Royal College of Nursing had been expecting a few hundred people to take part in the protest in Nottingham.
But Unison said thousands of people crammed into the city centre to voice their concern over the threat to jobs and hospital services in the region.
….. Around 5,000 health workers’ jobs were now under threat in the East Midlands, the union warned.
“These redundancies will weaken local delivery of NHS services and must be stopped,” said Ms Jennings.
Unison will raise its concerns about NHS cuts during the forthcoming Labour party conference.
Hundreds of workers at NHS Logistics will stage a second strike on Wednesday in protest at their jobs being privatised, putting further pressure on the government to halt its controversial NHS reforms. The workers staged a 24-hour walkout in protest at a lucrative 10-year contract being awarded to German delivery giant, DHL.
As Biz Weak reported last week (link appears to be free), “somehow” the US economy has added over 1.7 million jobs in the healthcare industry in the past 5 years (Biz Weak spun it as “no net jobs added anywhere else, but that’s why it’s called Biz Weak around here). Yet the UK’s nationalized healthcare delivery system, at least according to those who are in it day in and day out, is on the verge of collapse. The resistance to privatization of logistics is misguided, but hey, these are union folks, so you can’t expect perfection.
Somehow, I don’t feel as bad about how much we spend as a percentage of GDP on healthcare (16%, according to this article) as I did a few minutes ago.
That said, I agree with Biz Weak that a productivity explosion in US healthcare is coming, and is long overdue.
