So You Want National Healthcare?

Well, take a look across the pond at what their system has wrought.

Via thisislondon:

Social workers set 15 minute deadline on caring for elderly

Social workers have set a 15-minute limit on the amount of home help they will allow frail and vulnerable elderly people, a shocking watchdog report revealed.

Care workers are under strict orders to take no more than a quarter of an hour to dress and bathe someone who needs help looking after themselves.

Then they must abandon the job and move on to the next one, a report by the Government's social services inspectors said.

Their inquiry into the treatment of more than 350,000 vulnerable older people who need help to stay in their own homes found the system is riddled with shortages, failure and indifference.Most hurtful of the miseries inflicted on the elderly who get
home help is the "15 minute slot", which is "undignified and unsafe", the Commission for Social Care Inspection said.

It called for radical reforms to strip local council social workers of the right to organise home help for the elderly, and instead give older people their own buying power to get help from outside or pay the relatives who already care for them.

Inspectorate chief Dame Denise Platt said: "Failure to listen to what people really need, and respond to this, results in missed opportunities to promote independence.

"At worst, it can also result in services that do not respect people's rights and dignity."

Well it seems that perhaps capitalism is making a come back since socialized medicine can't sustain itself. Which is rather telling when we read on and find out that:

The new report by inspectors backed the findings of an independent inquiry into care of the elderly carried out earlier this year by former Treasury troubleshooter Sir Derek Wanless.

His findings - which were instantly dismissed by Chancellor Gordon Brown - said the Government should put greatly increased public spending into caring for people in their own homes in order to help them stay independent and out of care homes.

Once again the answer is to throw more money at the problem instead of analysing the root cause of the issue, that being that socialized medicine that provides a one-size fits all approach at no cost to the patient does not work.