Quoting Ant McWatt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > That's the hilarious part of this thread. Due to Platt's ignorance that > much of the NHS has been privatised over the last 25 years by politicians > following right-wing Thatcherite policies (as Case pointed out, this is a > fact that would be known by any reasonably intelligent UK based reader of > the Independent), he ended-up criticising "Grimecare" who are a privatised > health organization even though a cursory Google check would have revealed > this information to him. No thesis building required. >From Wikipedia under NHS:
"The National Health Service (NHS) is the "public face" of the three publicly funded health care systems of Great Britain (Northern Ireland does not use the title). It currently employs 1.33 million people, making it the world's fourth largest employer after the Chinese Army, Indian Railways and Wal-mart. "The NHS provides the majority of healthcare in the UK, from general practitioners to hospitals, long-term healthcare, dentistry and opthalmology. It was founded in 1948 and has become an integral part of British society, culture and everyday life: the NHS was once described by Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, as "the national religion". Private health care has continued parallel to the NHS, paid for largely by private insurance, but it is used only by a small percentage of the population, and generally as a top-up to NHS services. "NHS services are largely "free at the point of delivery", paid for by taxes; the NHS's budget for 2006-07 is £96 billion.[1] Employing over 1.3 million people, the NHS is the largest employer in Europe and one of the largest employers in the world, (believed to be third or fifth, according to different commentators). "The government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health, headed by the Secretary of State for Health, (presently Patricia Hewitt), who sits in the British Cabinet." If Ant wants to argue with Wikipedia that the NHS is largely a private organization, he's welcome to it. As far as I'm concerned the case that it is a government run system is closed. Others can decide for themselves. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
