So You Want a Government Operated Health System?

One need go no further than the London Review of Books to see how the NHS in the UK is working. They note:

In the year of its seventieth anniversary, the 1.3 million people who work for the National Health Service in England find themselves in a surreal situation. They’re effectively working within two realities at once, expected simultaneously to inhabit an NHS universe where a radical, highly optimistic reform programme is under way, and a second universe in which the organisation is unmistakeably close to breakdown. In universe one, the NHS will be upturned to give most of the healthcare people need at home or on their doorstep and admit to the big hospitals only patients with major trauma, or suffering diseases that demand intensive care, or complex surgical or biochemical expertise. Big hospitals are to become centres of research, high technology, rare skills and dramatic, life-saving interventions. Everything else will be diffused to the community. Loosely directed by the head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, money, staff and new investment are being directed towards primary care – family doctors, community nurses, souped-up local clinics, systems to help the chronically unwell live at home.

Yep, that is 1.3 million people in what is left of the UK, one third that of the US or even less. If we did this in the US it would be almost 5.2 million people. But the US has per Kaiser about 12.5 million already. So what does tell us?

Simply, we have a lot more per population. UK population is about 65 million and the US is about 325 million. Thus about 4:1. So we have about 2.5 times the people per person than the UK. But you can see the UK problem, people actually dying for lack of resources. Namely rationing and letting the old folks and sick kids just fade away! That is what it looks like from the numbers.