And of course, hospital closings or cutbacks can happen in that system and ours too. When a community loses access to health care, it’s sad whether it happens because of political ineptitude or ruthless efficiency of the market.

And I also am not sure that I would agree that “in a market based approach” the “rationale behind the distribution of medical facilities” is “direct need” and “actual demand.” We have poorer counties in Alabama with no hospital. Do they have no hospital because they have less demand than other counties for the services one would provide? Or because they can’t sustain one financially? I am fairly confident it is the latter, and that “direct need” is not a deciding factor.

I’m really kind of thinking aloud here as your post started me thinking…

By the way, I am not arguing even a little here that the British system is superior to what we have.

Since the point of your post is NOT that socialized medicine will lead to hospital closings and cutbacks like the one in the story, and since the reason why this clinic closed is beside the point, then I’ll just fade away on this one…

Thanks.

A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn’t Work

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C

An Englishman would of course say it is cruel, that healthcare is at the whims of the market but knows since his riding voted Labour, his hospital won’t close.

The Englishman also knows that he can go private if he has the funds or insurance coverage to do so.

Both market based and government run solutions to any problem have similar potential for failure and success. Market based solutions tend to be more responsive to an impetus for change. I don’t believe in the “whim” of the market. Truly free markets are anything but whimsical, rather they are ruthlessly efficient at meeting the demands of the consumers. You would NEVER, for example, see someone engaged in a for profit endeavor spend $320 million connecting two islands with a total population of less than 10,000 people -especially when the islands have an existing ferry service that charges $6 per person. Government programs are the breeding grounds of countless foolish, whimsical decisions and government run health care would simply be more of the same. Shelby would lavish Tuscaloosa with a Taj Mahal clinic that was well beyond the needs of the community.

I simply wondered if you have some knowledge that the hospital issue mentioned in the story was made worse by the fact that the system is government run. If that hospital were run under a capitalist for-profit system, is there anyway to know if the downsized services would instead be still available or cut even earlier?

Just seems like we are missing some info to really draw conclusions…

Another way of saying it, I guess, is what would keep someone from England drawing a similar (but reversed) conclusion from these news stories of our hospitals closing, saying “This is what you get in a for-profit system. Hospitals closing and healthcare options decided at the whim of the market.”

I just wonder if either conclusion would be valid from the limited amount of info available from the stories.

It must be great to know that the quality of your health care isn’t dependent upon your own personal skills and capability (manifested in the form of financial compensation for labor), but rather the democratic (little “d”) competency of others in your district.

A brief test with Iceweasel 2.0.0.6 AKA debianized Firefox