
Photo courtesy of British National Health Service Web site.
Physicians attending the British Medical Association’s annual conference in
“Not even in Communist China did they have managers overruling doctors in the operation of hospitals and health services,” Dr. Peter Holden, a member of the BMA, is quoted as saying.
But even though British physicians say that NHS bureaucrats are compromising patient care to save money, the government-run healthcare system is about to run out of funds, the Telegraph reported July 5th.
And by 2020, the largest single-payer healthcare system in the world will be running a deficit six times larger than its annual operating budget, forcing the closure of up to 20 percent ofA recent Telegraph investigation found “ambulance patients waiting up to eight hours” to be transferred to emergency rooms, adding that “the numbers forced to wait at least two hours outside A&Es (Accident & Emergency Centers) “has risen by two thirds in just one year.”
Not all NHS employees are feeling the pinch. A recent contract gives senior hospital staff a 28 percent pay raise while allowing them to refuse to work evenings and weekends, the Telegraph reported.