re: #279 yma o hyd

Indeed there is. It is in fact far worse, because with a state health service comes a bureaucracy, who takes over decisions as to where resources are being spent.
And you can certainly guess where they are not spent - on the care of the elderly.
Now our ‘Health Service’ has been going for 60 years, always udnerfunded, and more and more a political play ball, more and more given to vast bureaucracies ratehr than care for the sick.
You won’t be getting there as fast because you’re starting from a much higher level, and not from the stoical days of post-war Britain.

I don’t know. I think it could happen very quickly. Once someone other than the physician, the patient and the family is making the decisions, patients are no longer seen as human.

I think about my 79-year-old mother, who had successful rotator cuff surgery last month. She had to wait about a month because of Christmas and New Year’s, as well as the surgeon’s availability. She’s getting physical therapy and doing great, and she should be back to providing home day care for toddler twins sometime next month. Would a government bureaucracy have denied her the surgery and therapy based on her age? Would it have been okay at 79, but not a few months later at 80? Would it be okay for her, but not okay for someone else? I do not want to live in a world where some GS-9 (low-level government employee) is making that decision based on a file without ever meeting her.