That Britain’s NHS will undergo an historic change (“Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care”) is significant, sobering but not surprising. It’s an experience with valuable lessons for us over here on the other side of the pond.
Lessons about the inefficiencies of centralized government healthcare. There’s no value in calling it “socialist” when you can just say, “see, it doesn’t work.” As the man said, “attention must be paid.”
Lessons about what happens when your system is based on a cost-centric rather than a patient-focused philosophy of healthcare. Yes – we really need to put the 800-pound gorilla on the operating room table. Who needs “death panels” when you have “deny panels.”
And, finally, lessons about money. It really isn’t all about the amount of money you spend – if you don’t spend it in the right places. And that’s Lesson #1.
