(12-08-2024, 12:39 AM)Besticus Maximus wrote: with regards to budgets, it's just not a thing unless it's experimental pioneering treatment in extreme cases (like mad cancers where americans have crazy shit that costs a fortune and the risk analysis is underdeveloped and it's not been regulated to shit and back).
But it is a thing because capacity is finite in a socialised health system. It's why we have different categories for patients so that the most urgent cases are seen first.
There are many cases where someone is assessed as a less urgent category when they shouldn't have been and budget is the cause of this. If we had unlimited budgets, we'd have every patient treated as a cat 1, but we simply don't and some of those cat 2 and 3 patients will actually be miscategorised or will develop more serious symptoms while waiting for treatment.
The experimental treatment thing is an interesting case too because every few months the shitty tabloid TV news shows will have some sob story where people are begging for money to send their child to the US for one of these treatments and the story always has a "blame the government" angle for not paying for it. There is a prediction here that if we keep expanding the health budget at its current rate, then it will consume all government spending on its own within a few decades.
At the end of the day we can all sit back and argue about what is the best way to provide health care to people and no one has a perfect answer, but I think we all agree that shooting people in the face for running a business is not acceptable in a civilised society and anyone who celebrates those actions should probably be sent to the gulags for re-education given a stern talking to.
1 user liked this post: