• Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    NHS is being deliberately killed by a thousand cuts for its eventual privatization. I hope you Brits have been saving up for medical emergencies. You’ll be getting a taste of the American Way real soon.

    • clara@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      yeah people i talk to don’t seem to get what’s coming. like, they haven’t had the misfortune of a medical emergency in their life, and so they’ve never actually experienced how bad the service provision is getting. but not just for healthcare, it’s for every service.

      me personally? i’m saving up that money for sure. not for the next emergency, oh goodness no. i’m going to use that savings pot to leave this island for good. ideally before i get my next medical emergency. selfish? yep, you bet! 🙂

      but, i am fundamentally sick of living in a place where we pay all this money and get little service to show for it. for me, one of these two options is fine:

      1. somewhere where i pay low tax and rightfully get poor service.
      2. somewhere where i pay high tax and get premium quality of service.

      one or the other i am fine with, preferably option 2. but what we have in the uk is the downside of both of these options.


      bit of a tangent i know, but…

      rather than national or local governments fix any of this, they’ve instead embarked on massive campaigns to massage the statistics, through changing the measuring sticks used to assess service quality across the board, and in doing so, hide all the problems. this extends to water standards, and unemployment statistics, and cancer waiting times, etc etc.

      don’t even get me started about the filthy liars who do the passenger rail statistics 💩

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I guess the only upside to privatization is higher quality due to competition.

        • nexguy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Comparing a giant wealthy country to tiny wealthy countries is not apples to apples. A better comparison would be wealthy U.S. states to wealthy tiny counties. In this case the are very similar in population and in mortality rate.

      • lmaydev@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Pre austerity the NHS was absolutely top notch.

        As healthcare is a captive market they tend to focus more on cost which can lead to worse outcomes.

        Just look at our private prisons, care homes and trains.

        You can literally see what privatisation has done in other areas.

      • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Competition is no guarantee of improvement of product or service. Often it just ends up in a monopoly where both consumer and workers get burned while they’re told they are getting the best.