Thanks to Dr Paul Hsieh at We Stand Firm, we've finally managed to combine two favorite IB themes: the Much Vaunted National Health System© and Health Care Transparency. Turns out, a bunch of Brit docs have decided not to tell their cancer patients about potentially life-saving treatment options because....wait for it...."some of those options would not be permitted under the government system."
Hooray for gummint-run health care!
Not content with denying care to British victims, er, citizens at home, these docs refuse to tell their patients that they could obtain necessary treatment abroad. Of course, these compassionate care givers have a perfectly valid rationale: "such a discussion might "distress, upset or confuse" their patients."
Well, we can't have any of that.
As we've noted many times here at InsureBlog, health care costs drive health insurance costs, and one factor in this equation is that consumers have been kept unaware of just what those costs really are. Now that transparency in health care is gaining momentum, folks are becoming more aware of those costs, and cost efficient alternatives. These British physicians, on the other hand, seem to be tilting away from such transparency. By keeping information about treatment options hidden away from their patients, they are, in effect, artificially depressing costs at the expense of their own patients.
I share Dr Hsieh's conclusion that "what makes the system especially evil is not the fact that it allows a few doctors to act badly, but rather that it takes good doctors and turns them into bad physicians willing to betray their patients."
Indeed.
[Hat Tip: Elizabeth A. Terrell]
Posts
