HealthBeat FYI: Health Care Rationing A ‘Necessary Evil’

June 28, 2007

As SiCKO premieres nationwide this Friday, Michael Moore is telling anyone who'll listen that the U.S. needs to model its health care system on those such as Canada and the U.K. One of the most critical features of those systems is institutional rationing of care.  Recently, members of the British Medical Association warned that the government and the National Health Service (NHS) needs to be more open about the fact that rationing not only takes place, but will have to be increased in the future.

"Alex Smallwood, from the BMA's junior doctors' committee, told the [BMA] meeting it needed to be accepted that rationing must take place in the NHS, but this had to be done much more openly.

"It is no longer possible to provide all the latest to absolutely everybody without notable detriment to others," he said.

"Rationing is reduction in choice. Rationing has become a necessary evil. We need to formalise rationing to prevent an unregulated, widening, postcode-lottery of care. Government no longer has a choice." "

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=995812007

In a related story in the Chicago Tribune, Helen Evans, director of Nurses for Reform, a pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-oriented reform of European health-care systems, discussed Michael Moore's SiCKO, and the film maker's blatant disregard of the care rationing and long wait times experienced in the NHS:

"In the film's trailer, a desk attendant at a British hospital smiles while explaining that in Britain's National Health Service, "everything is free." But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price.

Just ask the nearly 1 million British patients on waiting lists for treatment. Or the 200,000 Britons currently waiting merely to get on NHS waiting lists. Mr. Moore must have missed those folks."

"...after nearly six decades of attempting to make socialized medicine work, the NHS is in a perilous state.

Consider waiting lists. Across Britain, patients wait years for routine -- or even emergency -- treatments. And many die while waiting.

Indeed, the NHS cancels around 100,000 operations because of shortages each year. In a growing number of communities, it is increasingly difficult for people to simply get an appointment with an NHS general practitioner for a regular checkup."

"The criteria for these denials of care are kept from the public. And patients who could be saved needlessly die.

Rationing, as history proves time and again, is always a recipe for horror.

The U.S. health-care system certainly has its shortfalls. But the solution to America's woes can't be found in the U.K. -- no matter how many movie tickets Mr. Moore sells."

NCPA health care experts have seen SiCKO, and are available to discuss the film, and the impact of rationing health care services.

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