Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> The British NHS discovered that by not feeding hospitalized patients they could realize tremendous savings in food, shortened length of hospital stay, followup costs, etc.

That's a lie. Try checking your facts next time:

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/nhs_malnutrition_death-28806

Oh, and by the way, the NHS costs us less than US public healthcare costs. Meanwhile, I can get zero deduction, all additions, money for any nights spent in an NHS hospital, private health insurance for $150 a month. How much does yours cost?




The story was covered extensively by bloggers over 5 years ago, and appeared in the press periodically since. Basically, the local NHS trusts fired a lot of hospital staff to save money. They replaced them with service contractors.

So instead of a trained nurse feeding helpless patients, a gormless food deliverer drops a tray off at the patient and leaves. On paper they are still being fed, but in reality patients were starving during the trickiest few hours of recovery. But look at the costs drop!

Similar cost cutting was done for the building caretakers and similar staff. On paper everything is the same just more efficient, but in reality the floors are not getting cleaned, nobody is bringing round tea for the surgeon in the middle of a 12 hour procedure. But look at the costs go down! Look at the readmission rate drop!


Even if true, this seems like it's focusing on one tiny aspect of NHS administration and blowing it up to declare that universal healthcare is somehow ineffective. I'm sure you can find a multitude of issues in private healthcare where cost cutting measures are systematically impacting end patient health.

When looking at whole system costs and value delivery, it's really difficult to conclude that the American healthcare system is anywhere near as efficient as other national universal health care systems.


Well, yeah, except that the starving patients bit never actually happened. That's the bit you're missing.

I know that they had some problems with some NHS trusts as they went more "efficient private sector", mainly with cleanliness, but this was not pervasive throughout the NHS and suggesting it was commonplace is a flat out lie.


Once again, I am not talking about the recent media fight about arguably-cooked statistics. I'm talking about reports from a variety of sources starting in about 2007, including nurses and doctors. If it was a disinformation campaign, it was curiously extensive for not having been used in a media campaign of the day.


Links, fact and numbers. Not "I heard it on the Internet so it must be true". If you're going to accuse the nurses and doctors who work in the NHS of criminal negligence, you ought to have the decency to at least check your facts!

And you never got around to answering my question: is your private insurance cost competitive with UK private insurance?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: