Wow – that was unexpected..lol…

The country’s top GP yesterday rejected a Government crackdown on health tourism as ‘xenophobic’.

Dr Clare Gerada, of the Royal College of General Practitioners, insisted doctors would not act as ‘a new border agency’ by asking about the immigration status of patients.

And she cast doubt on the findings of a Government report warning of the huge cost of foreign visitors and short-term migrants.

Of course, I mean since they gave up after hours care our GPs have so little time in which they can spend their six figure taxpayer funded salary.

Once again the medical trade unions pose as monks and nuns, serving the people with no thought of enriching themselves – it really beggars belief that they still feel they can pretend they have no wish to be soiled by the mere mention of money.

Now it so happens that Cameron, May and company are trying to dodge a bullet by getting doctors, landlords and bosses the responsibility of operating border checks on behalf of those who are supposed to protect our borders. As UKIP has suggested we can cut out all this franchising out of border control by ensuring that entry to the UK via our seaports and airports is implemented in a robust and efficient way and “health tourism” costs could be reduced by making the possession of an adequate health insurance policy is a condition for the granting of any visa, or even, going further than UKIP, a condition of entry for any non UK passport holder who wants to come into Britain

However it must be made clear to Dr Gerada that it is not for her to refuse the instructions of an employer to administer/collect such charges. Fortunately it appears that she does not speak for a majority of her colleagues.

At last – a measure of reality coming into the NHS debate from doctors who, for decades, have colluded with other health professionals to perpetuate the myth that “free at the point of entry” is a divine right set in Bevanite stone.

Payment for GP consultation is regarded as quite normal in almost every other health system based on the social insurance model (as is payment for board & lodging for hospital in-patients). It helps to cover costs and filters out those who would abuse the system.

With an increasingly elderly population we could never hope to operate a service which is both caring and efficient.

However, in return for payment, we should demand a more balanced consumer/provider relationship:

• Customer friendly hours for appointments – evenings, Saturdays etc
• Initial appointments within hours rather than two weeks
• Competition between practices to win customers by offering wider services
• Reception geared to interests of consumers rather than providers

After all this is already happening…….

Now here’s an idea – why hasn’t anyone else thought of this?

“Our patients are our customers”

A private doctor’s surgery run by Poles is attracting thousands of patients who have given up on the NHS.
Open seven days a week, usually until 11pm, the clinic gives half-hour appointments – three times longer than usual.
And, despite charging £70 a visit, it already has almost 6,000 Britons on its books. Customers are welcomed into the spotless and modern centre by friendly receptionists whose motto is to ‘put patients first’.

 

You mean that these “customers” don’t have to approach the receptionist as a supplicant, grovelling for a favour by pleading for an appointment that day? They can actually spend half an hour with the doctor rather than be part of conveyor belt that jerks back into action after ten minutes? If they can’t be bothered to turn up for their appointment because it clashes with daytime TV they’ll still have to pay £70? Is it possible that being ill at weekends is no longer a cardinal sin interfering with a GP’s round of golf?

OMG….the BBC Question time audience would have a collective nervous breakdown and the health professionals cartels (aka “unions”) would be flooding our screens with messages of doom, shock and horror at this Oliver Twist moment…

Blah blah blah….lessons learned…..monitoring……values driven….blah blah…..NHS…..envy of the world……

Stephen Pollard, editor of The Jewish Chronicle summed it up in a piece at the Telegraph

Mid Staffs inquiry: spare me the NHS drivel, please…… I really can’t take another second of the specious, misleading and hypocritical response to the Francis Inquiry into what happened at Mid Staffs.

Naturally the full force of venom is being directed at “the managers” with several people demanding that hospitals should be run by doctors and nurses. However, as one brave soul posted at Guido Fawkes

Let’s not forget that it is actually nurses who fail to provide basic care. Nurses are usually regarded as immune to criticism, whereas nobody likes beastly bureaucrats; nor do hospitals actually seem to be short of nurses, if the gaggles of chattering people milling around most NHS wards are anything to go by. We might need more doctors and orderlies and fewer ‘angels’.

Heresy – the nursing unions and the BBC won’t like that. But it was nurses and doctors who were actually on the wards ignoring patients, not “managers”

However we live in times rather similar to the early years of Imperial Rome where very few actually believed in the Roman gods – but most citizens made certain they were seen in the temples. In the UK in the 21st century it has been clear for years that the NHS is a blundering, inefficient and incredibly expensive monstrosity run almost exclusively for the benefit and convenience of doctors and nurses – a producer’s cartel very similar to those that, up until now, have controlled schools, police and the law. Yet in public we are required to make obeisance to this false god or face being burned at the stake..

prefacing almost every response to Mr Francis’ report has been the incantation that the NHS is our proudest institution and represents British values at their best.
If this is Britain at its best then God help us, because the NHS is an anachronism, a health system built on deference to authority, Whitehall knows best, government spends best and if you’re a patient then learn your place in the food chain, keep quiet and take what’s offered.

As one angry reader of Pollard pointed out

You can’t criticise the nurses, no matter how poor or uncaring they are, they are angels. You can’t criticise the doctors and consultants because they are better than us. You can’t criticise Whitehall because they aren’t listening. You can’t criticise the managers because they are counting the numbers given to them by Whitehall and you can’t criticise the NHS because its a National Treasure. The only people left to criticise are the patients and their families.

Sorry, Mr Francis – you’re just painting plague pustules with calomine lotion. The notion of a tax funded, “free” at point of entry health service is in itself the root cause of Mid Staffs and no amount of tinkering at the edges will resolves these endemic problems.

Time to put the customer in the driving seat?

Full marks to the NHS..The Lovely Mrs P slipped and fell while we were out hiking. Fortunately we were just starting out, 100 yds from the car park. A friend an I managed to lift her up but she couldn’t press with her right foot so we hobbled to the car.

Drove to East Surrey Hospital A&E…from arrival at emergency, initial assessment, further examination, X Ray, broken ankle diagnosed, leg plastered and leaving for home…all in just under 2 hours. Staff were efficient, caring, considerate and good humoured…just sayin’…..

Most of us in Europe, Asia and America are living longer – but not so much of that in Africa. Many people in Africa are dying earlier than us of malaria, typhoid etc….those old fashioned diseases caused by bugs, dirty water and exacerbated by under nourishment.

However few of us will simply die in our sleep – instead we will die of other diseases like cancer or heart/blood pressure problems because these are diseases of old age. Most Africans, for the moment, are spared that.
The diseases that will kill us off are non-communicable diseases, known as NCDs and you’ll be glad to know that the UN is on the case.

On Saturday at the sixty-fifth World Health Assembly – a meeting of the 194 member countries of the World Health Organisation – ‘delegates approved the development of a global monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs, including indicators and a set of global targets.

Don’t rush out into the street proclaiming that the WHO has found a cure for cancer because we’re not talking about SCIENCE. The guys and gals in their white coats are still shaking their test tubes and are still far away from finding a cure. No, we are talking about the only global industry that is in permanent growth mode – public health agitprop or health “education” as the industry prefers to describe itself.

‘The NCD Alliance, a global advocacy organization representing a network of more than 2,000 civil society organizations led a major lobbying campaign, and mobilized its network to ensure this target was secured.’
‘Intense lobbying by NGOs’ : the epitaph of our times. How delightful it is that these organisations think that lobbying and legislation is a substitute for biology and medical science.

You know exactly what sort of people will be implementing these campaigns says Chris Snowdon at Spiked

the puritans, bureaucrats, nannies and headbangers of public health are so keen on the idea of ‘non-communicable diseases’, because it gives them what every trigger-happy army general wants: a war without end.

…and it gives them salaries and funds to spent upon “marketing strategies”…and once in situ they will always be demanding more money for “one last push” and the supply of money will be limitless because it will come from “governments” i.e. taxpayers pockets.

Here’s a novel idea – why not by pass the lobbyists and “civil groups” and marketers with all their high rent offices and glossy leaflets and bustling office staff and give the money to the guys and gals in the research laboratories shaking their test tubes and help them find an actual cure….

Nah – on second thoughts that’s a bit too old fashioned and so not 21st century….and there wouldn’t be any “ambassador” jobs for Hollywood celebrities and their hangers on….

Martin Kettle, an associate editor of The Guardian, is deeply saddened by the fact that in the UK we align politicians with car salesmen and estate agents as the least trustworthy of all professions.

He blames – the satirists.

Today’s satire is deeply cynical, depicting British politics as a nest of fools. It may make us laugh, but its impact is not funny

Moreover he fingers the two faces who, he claims, are most to blame for this sorry state of affairs, “Private Eye” editor and HIGNFY panelist Ian Hislop and political blogger Guido Fawkes.

Without them, no doubt, we would be seeing our politicians in a different light – even on a par with doctors who are perceived as the most trusted of professionals ,regarded as truthful and public spirited.

Yeah, right…..naturally Kettle, as a journalist, makes the assumption that Joe and Jane Public are too dim to draw conclusions from their own observation and experience so they must have someone else to tell them what to think.

What is truly fascinating, however, are the names he did not include – Mark Thomas, Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle et al. Hear these and any other TV or radio comedy with a political edge and you soon discover that to a man or woman they are left wing, pseudo marxist, rainbow and unicorn preachers of political correctness. They were weaned on Thatcher hatred and transferred their bile towards Blair because he recognised that Labour could only gain power by suppressing the student union leftism that drives their “comedy”. Luckily for them their views were and are shared by those in the upper reaches of BBC programming – hence the absence of any right wing comedy on mainstream TV/radio.

Hislop and Guido are great mockers of Cameron, Osborne and the Tories, just like Thomas and co. But – and here is the key to Guardianista Kettle’s discomfort – they also mercilessly lampoon the left wing media/political/cultural elite. What is more, they regularly shine a light onto the cant, hypocrisy and mendacity displayed by many editors and journalists in the smug, self satisfied world of the media……Martin Kettle’s world. For what he forgets to tell us is that our regard for journalists is as low as our view of politicians and estate agents….

Crocodile tears, Mr Kettle, crocodile tears…..

Just a few days ago in the Pakistan city of Lahore Muhammad Riaz was feeling very depressed. A very friendly and concerned stranger asked him why he was so unhappy. Mr Riaz told him that with no regular income he was desperate for money.

Don’t worry, the man said, I can fix you up with 110,000 Rupees (about £800) by this evening – and all you have to do is sell one of your kidneys to a wealthy Arab. He is ill, but your kidney will save him, you will still have your other kidney plus about four times what you could earn in a year by doing various odd jobs.

To Mr Riaz that was an almost unimaginable sum of money so he followed the man to a house in Street No 6 Block-A of Al-Faisal Town where he was told to lie down on a stretcher while a doctor made preparations for the transplant operation.

But Mr Riaz began to have second thoughts and, just as the doctor was about to inject him he broke free, ran out of the house and sought assistance from passers –by.

Such were the details presented by police to a magistrate who decided there was a case to answer and remanded two doctors and five other men in custody for further investigation. One of the doctors, however, was not very happy. He said the house was not used for organ transplants but merely as a free clinic for poor people. Moreover he claimed that he was beaten up by one of the police officers and told that if he passed over R700,000 the case would be “forgotten”

Who was telling the truth? Police in Pakistan, like police in many other countries, are not averse to a bit of intimidation and bribery. But Lahore has become a major organ bazaar as thousands of poverty stricken locals are driven to sell bits of their bodies to keep the rest of themselves alive – and there is no shortage of customers for these body parts from wealthy families in every continent. Waiting for a legal above board donation can be frustrating and in countries like China, Egypt and Pakistan there is a ready made medical mafia willing and eager to trouser big bucks for no questions asked medical procedures.

Charging the patient £20,000 and paying the “donor” £800 certainly equals a juicy profit margin though part of that might have to be passed to corrupt police officers – the traffic was recently made illegal after a public hue and cry. However passing a law in Pakistan does not guarantee enforcement in what many believe to be a failing state.

The donors are, like Mr Riaz, from the poorest levels of society – usually Punjabi bonded labourers faced with a lifetime of debt. Just as with the drugs cartels in Mexico whenever there is a demand there will always be supply.

And of course there is always a more chilling dimension to the supply side. A donor can survive with only one kidney but there is also a demand for transplanting other organs – and a child with no family could offer a rich harvest for ruthless and greedy criminals with no soul…..

H/T to Pakistan press: Dawn, Express Tribune, Daily Times