Today's Daily Telegrah article reveals that the NHS has finally admitted there are flaws in their governmental bureaucratic system, so they are deigning to "allow" physicians more authority in the treatment of their patients by giving them control of the business side of running a clinic, but of course liberals in the U.K. are very worried about this novel idea.
This morning as I listened to the TV, the BBC commentators argued that doctors are only trained to treat patients, not to run a business. The bottom line is that they don't think the doctors are smart enough to run the business side of a clinic, but the doctors are apparently smart enough to make life and death decisions about their patients. Liberal logic (both in the U.K. and the U.S.) implies that doctors can't multitask. Who would have thought it was even possible, even though American doctors have been efficiently running their clinics in the States without bureaucratic interference before Obamacare was passed. On the positive side, there is a glimmer of hope that the NHS is regaining its sanity -- they are opening the door to privatization again. Meanwhile, America's health care is going in exactly the opposite direction.
Here's the story:
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Daily Telegraph
7/12/2010
GPs are to be handed £80bn of the NHS budget to buy care from hospitals and other doctors for patients in their area, as hundreds of middle-management organisations are swept away.
Family doctors will be responsible, in consortiums, for commissioning the care for patients in their area by buying treatment from hospitals, charities and other doctors.
The consortiums will be answerable to an independent Commission Board which will set objectives for healthcare, monitor performance and guide doctors in purchasing care.
[snip]
"It is hard to stress just how radical this is. The NHS will look much more like the gas, electricity or telecom’s market than it will the monolithic state bureaucracy we have come to understand,". . .
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