Is it not possible that the rich are going elsewhere for medical treatment, because their money won’t put them in front of the line? They now have to wait like all the rest. Only they won’t wait; they will go abroad. If the rich get treatment abroad and the poor get it at home, is this bad?

Or maybe this isn’t how it’s working. Just some thoughts about what this doesn’t prove. We need lots more facts before we can declare socialized medicine a demon.

What the wag said about sailing, could also be said of the NHS: “The fine art of getting [a] cold and becoming ill, while slowly going nowhere at great expense”.

“My fear is that most people can’t afford to have private treatment – whether in this country or abroad.”

How soon will the Brits be hearing their politicians talk about the need to subsidize poor people who cannot afford decent care outside the NHS?

Having turned their health care system into a dysfunctional bureaucracy, will they wind up having to pay for the “less fortunate” to escape it?

And how long will it be before “undocumented aliens” are included among the “less fortunate”?

Wars come and go, the economy goes up and down, even the earth warms and then it cools, but if we take a step toward socialized medicine, that will be forever.

Don’t forget that a a four-and-a-half month wait is only for the LUCKY ones. More than half wait longer than that. And apparently this represents a decrease in wait times.

This article doesn’t even mention the people who seek treatment elsewhere (such as the U.S.) because the specific treatment for their diseases is not available at all in the U.K..

Interesting because when I was living in England in 1975 - 1977 it was experiencing precisely those same problems, for precisely the same reasons.

Which is a pretty perfect encapsuled explanation of why government bureacracies historically cannot run much of anything.

And quite clearly more people were treated at home than went abroad, the reason is simple and should be obvious: not everyone can afford either the time away from work or the money to leave the country for a medical procedure. That more people stayed home than went abroad isn’t surprising. It’s primarily a reflection of the simple fact that fewer people can afford to go away - same as just about anywhere else.

This is the kind of “good news” that can kill us.

I expect the MSM to remain the water-carriers for the Dems as they try to socialize the medical care in this country.

I’ll be the first to agree that our health care system has problems. My mother has premium Blue Cross and the doctors see dollar signs when she walks into the room. Everything is done as inefficiently as possible to maximize the number of paying visits she has to make. Also, she’s something of a hypochondriac, but the doctors don’t deal with that issue, because it works to their benefit that she keeps showing up. Still, I’d rather fix this system then switch to the grim realities of government managed care.