Hi Ray,
As for waiting, it's just the same here. On average, people have to wait
several days, sometimes well over a week, before they can see a National
Health Service doctor at their local health centre.
And there's another extremely important phenomenon involved here which I
haven't touched upon yet, and which probably doesn't affect you in America.
There is widespread agreement by NHS doctors that about half of all
'patients' have nothing wrong with them physiologically. They are
psychologically stressed.
This is not to say that such stressed individuals do not need some form of
help but they certainly overload our health centres. The consequence of
this is that the average time available per patient is 6 minutes! A further
consequence of this is that the local doctor is rushed, does not have
enough time for a leisurely investigation of the symptoms that a patient
brings (that is, of those with a definite physiological condition) and all
too readily sends the patient to the hospital consultant for further
investigation, thus overloading the latter as well.
In both America and England we simply don't have enough doctors and both
countries are having to import large numbers of them from undeveloped
countries, thus depriving the latter of some of their most important
people. Once again, our discussion centres down upon the inadequacies of
standardised state education systems and of the allied problems of
excessive credentialism. In short, there is a widespread, though
unconscious, conspiracy of middle-class job protectionism and the poor
suffer in all ways -- lack of access to jobs and to good health care.
Keith Hudson
At 16:30 14/07/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Well Keith,
>
>I hear the complaints and we have plenty of the reverse over here. Same
>complaints except a private system. Over here you can spend all of your
>time trying to find a doctor who takes your private health care plan.
>Most of the time you see "Medical assistants" who are nurses who the doctor
>allows to prescribe and diagnose. From what you are saying I suspect we
>do the big things better than you but the everyday stuff that leads up to it
>you would be better off doing it yourself over here. No one is in charge
>and the ability to avoid malpractice rules everything.
>
>Personally I still believe that it is about personal laziness, a lack of
>self motivation and the inability to resist stealing from the system that
>everyone depends upon in one way or another. They are acting like all of
>those Christian Minister's descriptions of original sin except they don't
>believe there is retribution so nothing seems to stop them. There is no
>social conscience or even consciousness.
>
>Ray
>
>
>
>
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
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