Socialized Healthcare Fail

As the U.S. moves slowly towards socialized healthcare (you didn't think Obamacare was the last step, did you?), now we get word that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is "on the brink of collapse". From The Guardian:

The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis. 

Years of underfunding have left the service facing such “impossible” demands that without urgent extra investment in November’s autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce “draconian rationing” of treatment – all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says.

...“Taken together this means the NHS is increasingly failing to do the job it wants to do and the public needs it to do, through no fault of its own,” Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, writes in the Observer. 

They had the same problem back in the 1990's.

What we have here is the "Tragedy of the Commons" writ large. As one quote in the Guardian article points out:

Chris Ham, the King’s Fund’s chief executive, said: “The clear message from the NHS leaders, doctors and nurses I’ve spoken to is that they are increasingly unable to cope with rising demand for services, maintain standards of care and stay within their budgets.

“The government must be honest with the public about what the NHS can deliver with the funding it has been given. It is simply not realistic to expect hard-pressed staff to deliver new commitments like seven-day services while also meeting waiting-time targets and reducing financial deficits.”

I am reminded of the old business rule: "Better, faster, or cheaper. Pick two." Even in business, you only get two. You expect government to do better?

The greatest irony in all of this is that governments spend ungodly amounts of money to prevent the inevitable, which in this case is death. Preventing death is like playing whack-a-mole: You can prevent every possible cause of death, only to die of something you missed. And you will miss something, guaranteed, because we all die in the end.

If we spent more time coming to terms with the idea of death, and less time and money on unsustainable healthcare systems, we could make this world a better place. Until then, get ready for high taxes to pay for less-than-adequate healthcare.