LIP UP FATTY.....
Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 11:10AM 
It's being reported that smokers, people with alcohol problems and the obese could be denied "priority treatment" (What's that - seen within three years?) on the NHS if they do not try to change their lifestyle. The Cabinet is discussing the controversial idea as part of a drive by Tony Blair to secure his ..ahem..."domestic political legacy" by pushing through a final round of public service "reforms" (ho ho ho) before he departs next year.
Experts warned this month that obesity, which costs the NHS £7bn a year, could bankrupt it if left unchecked and predicted that the proportion of obese adults would rise from one in five to one in three by 2010. Smoking-related diseases cost an estimated £1.7bn a year, with the same amount spent on alcohol-related problems. The treatment of alcohol-related harm, such as violent crime and traffic accidents, costs an estimated £20bn.
Now then, what are we to make of this? I thought that the concept of the NHS (with which I profoundly disagree) is free health care at point of delivery FOR ALL. I view such a utopian vision as incompatible with reality and a political scam. Look, people WILL drink, smoke, get obese and goodness knows what else. That's their CHOICE! Since I believe that a better health care solution lies in each of us being responsible for our own health care needs, I don't want the State to have any involvement whatsoever. But the State knows better except it is now being relentlessly hoist on it's own petard, having to actively EXCLUDE potentially millions of people, who nonetheless pay taxes for the non- service. Fre Health Care for all????
I believe that Statist health care is doomed in the medium run, since the demographics of an aging society and a below-replacement- level birth-rate will bankrupt it. But in the meantime, as the meltdown continues, the politicians want to play God deciding who they will and who they won't treat. Best not get ill.
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Reader Comments (13)
Merry Christmas and please keep healthy in the Nw year.
Eventually you will kill off all the sick babies, pull the plug on the long term ill, bump off the elderly and refuse to treat the "undeserving" sick. Thus enough money is saved to keep hiring ridiculous numbers of people in marginal constituencies.
Rather than rationing care via waiting lists the state will now attempt to do it by moral assessment! So will they close the STD clinics? Or deny IVF to women who have had abortions? Of course not. Just get the smokers the drinkers and the fatties. I am none of the above and I still wouldn't trust the state to cut my toenails.
I visited my father in hospital yesterday.
Because of his very poor health, he was one of only three patients on the big ward. There were eight nurses present, they chose tooccupy an empty patients room, drank tea, read magazines, watched TV and ignored the three ill men who were forced to spend Christmas Day with hardly a spoken word from the "angels" NHS cant I can do without.
Now, you want to talk about public health expenses that are entirely preventable, let's talk about the cost of sports medicine and injury. Knee replacement, anyone?
You appear to advocate a private health care system? If yes then I hope you and yours have genetics compatible with getting healthcare insurance at a reasonable price. By that I mean you better not have any family history of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, alcoholism, cancer, cystic fibrosis, asthma, depression, schizophrenia and about a thousand other diseases. You claim to be pro-life but this view is fundamentally incompatible with a healthcare that prioritises the rich. Rich or poor we all have the same right to medical treatment. If you think otherwise then you aren't exactly a good Chrsitian. I doubt Jesus would've turned away a poor man.
p.s. If I have misenterpretated your post then I apologise for the rant!
My father is dying of cancer, my mother has alzheimers. I reckon the Vance DNA structure is as troubled as many BUT I oppose the State being my nanny. There is NO such thing as free Health Care and all I am suggesting is that we all need to be responsible for taking actions to manage our own health. I do oppose the NHS on the basis on which it is constructed and funded. I vehemenely oppose political involvement in health. I oppose trade Unions involvement in health. I am libertarian minded on this and simply think it wroing that Govt take taxes from us to fund the NHS and then turn around and deny the use of it to those who do things of which they disapprove.
A clinically obese man with diabetes who develops kidney stones should be lectured on his eating habits and sent home with a diet sheet, according to New Labour, another fine example of do as I say not as I do.
"Rich or poor we all have the same right to medical treatment."
The poor are more likely to be heavy smokers, heavy drinkers and just plain heavy so under the rationing proposals mentioned they would certainly face discrimination.
I would suggest that common ground exists between us as I believe that the measure of any policy is the impact it has on the less well off in society.
The only reason for not hanging the rich from the nearest lamppost is the the inconvenient truth that the free market system delivers the greatest good for the greatest number.
I don't think very many people would today make a case for the state running the phone system. Or the airlines
The result of those industries being freed was that prices dropped and choice increased.
That would happen in health too. Patients would be consumers rater than supplicants to a state which treats them as an expense and tries to find ways of cheating them out of their treatment.
This is nu labour eugenics – rationing health care on political grounds because their incompetence has squandered the billions of taxpayers pounds poured into the NHS.
I assume that treatment will be also be denied to people engaging in dangerous and self harming practices such as rugby, horse riding GAA etc.
I would trust private health care any day before NHS. National Insurance has gone up, but I can no longer get an NHS dentist, I have to pay twice because of the greedy incompetent Brown. Dentists won’t work for the NHS despite the massive increases of money being shovelled into it.