Looks like they are taking a big step in the righ direction. And it only took them sixty-some years to figure it out!Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of EnglandÂ’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
Looks like the way they work is to tax the crap out of everyone to pay for healthcare instead of just take the money out of their paychecks as would a private system. If the number of dollars is the same, then fine. If everyone pays the same percentage with no freeloaders, then fine. If the government remembers to simply distribute the money equitably and not keep any for themselves, then fine. If they don't mind the private providers coming up with and implementing innovative methods of delivering decent healthcare for less money, then fine. But some administrations are known for using these kinds of mechanisms to punish those that don't toe the line.
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
Losing these jobs can only be a good thing. These jobs are a burden. They can learn to be doctors or bloggers or something useful.
In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”
Well if it's just duplication, then just remove the duplication. That would be easy enough. But they are not. My interpretation of what the hand is doing is that it is an admission that government has very little part to play in the details of delivering healthcare. Government should just set the stage and get out of the way.
I wonder if Obama's Healthcare Czar who loves the British system is paying attention . . . .