Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care - NYTimes.com

You know this is bad when Great Britain is going down the decentralization road and B Hussein Obama and his fellow socialists are trying to seize the entire American medical association. I wonder if that idiot Berwick is going to be saying England "you chose well"?

Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care -NYTimes.com

Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care
...Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.

The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.

In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”

Question. What is the primary function of any bureaucracy? To insure its own survival. Nothing else comes close. Its stated purpose is not even an afterthought. The unions will fight this more than the troops fought the Battle of Britain.

The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, also promised to put more power in the hands of patients. Currently, how and where patients are treated, and by whom, is largely determined by decisions made by 150 entities known as primary care trusts — all of which would be abolished under the plan, with some of those choices going to patients. It would also abolish many current government-set targets, like limits on how long patients have to wait for treatment.

Now here is my favorite....

...Many critics say that the plans are far too ambitious, particularly in the short period of time allotted, and they doubt that general practitioners are the right people to decide how the health care budget should be spent. Currently, the 150 primary care trusts make most of those decisions. Under the proposals, general practitioners would band together in regional consortia to buy services from hospitals and other providers.

OK, let me get this straight. A bureaucrat who has no idea about the practice of medicine or who the hell the patient is or their condition is better able to make decisions on use of medical resources (i.e. money) than a doctor. Classis bureaucrat speak. They don’t like the thought of losing their worthless jobs or power. Doctors, engineers, project managers make decisions on money every day. They don’t need an unaccountable group of overseers to approve aspirin or second guess every decision.

...David Furness, head of strategic development at the Social Market Foundation, a study group, said that under the plan, every general practitioner in London would, in effect, be responsible for a $3.4 million budget.

“It’s like getting your waiter to manage a restaurant,” Mr. Furness said. “The government is saying that G.P.’s know what the patient wants, just the way a waiter knows what you want to eat. But a waiter isn’t necessarily any good at ordering stock, managing the premises, talking to the chef — why would they be? They’re waiters.”...

3.4 million is the amount of money handled by many small businesses, including a doctor’s office. How many restaurants, dry cleaners, mechanic’s shops, gas stations handle that much every year. And to hear this worthless bureaucrat say “we’re indispensable” because you’re too stupid to run things is really insulting….and typical. Look at the man-child in the White House.
But advocacy groups for general practitioners welcomed the proposals. BTY Mr Furness, many a successful restaurant is run by a former inspired waiter.