US Health Care Reform Passes – Good Or Bad News ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222010
 

So a short while ago the Democrats pushed through their health care reform package through.

Good or bad news ?

Well, it seems that the share prices of health care companies went up at the news. Now this could be a glitch or perhaps the market investors know something we do not. Does this indicate that the reforms are still going to allow companies to make excessive profits – or even that their profits will grow ?

Of course for the uninsured in the US, this will at least mean they get some form of decent health care which is definitely good news.

But if the US does not take any action on the costs of their health care system, they will sooner or later be faced with a bill they cannot pay. The US currently spends twice the amount in terms of GDP per capita that their competitors do. And I doubt that the reform bill is going to make a bit of difference to the cost of health care.

Stafford Hospital – Now We Know

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 242010
 

Today the report into the failings at Stafford Hospital was published. I admit I have not read the report, but the gist of the findings have been widely publicised in the media today. Even without reading the report, there are some immediately obvious outcomes.

It is clear that the management of Stafford Hospital failed abysmally to fulfil their basic duty of care to the patients. Some have criticised the government targets for distracting the management from their core responsibilities. That is rubbish – it does not take a genius to realise that no matter how many targets you are meeting, if patients are dying because of inadequate care, then you are failing in your duty as a responsible manager, and as a human being.

Personally I believe there is a clear case for the former Chief Executive, Martin Yeates to be charged with corporate manslaughter. If he had not been in charge and someone else with basic common sense had been running the hospital, then several hundred patients would not have died.

Those campaigners complaining about the report being a total whitewash (even before they had the chance to read it in many cases!) might want to consider bringing a private prosecution against Martin Yeates – even if there is little chance of him being found guilty (corporate manslaughter is weighted in favour of the corporations), dragging him through the courts is the beginning of some sort of punishment.

The other obvious things is that although the NHS did finally spot what was going on at Stafford Hospital, is that the NHS needs to dramatically improve the monitoring of hospitals. To some extent this has already been done, and the government has announced another inquiry into monitoring of hospitals.