The Club For Growth has a link to a UK Telegraph article reporting that doctors are treating patients so quickly that the National Heatlh Service can’t keep up the payment of doctors, so the NHS is imposing minimum waiting times for patients.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, added that the minimum waiting times shed new light on the Government’s target that patients should wait no longer than six months. “It is outrageous that the purpose of the Government’s targets is not so much to drive down waiting times, as to impose a six-month wait.”The measures also seem certain to add to the anger that erupted last week after Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk admitted it had forfeited £2.4 million because it treated patients too quickly, having already agreed a 122-day minimum waiting time with East Suffolk Primary Care Trust (PCT), its funding body. The hospital finished the last financial year £16.7 million in the red.
(skipping)
Doctors are also resigning. One gynecologist said that he spent more time doing sudoku puzzles than treating patients because of the measures. Since January, West Hertfordshire NHS Trust, with a deficit of £41 million, has used a 10-week minimum wait for routine GP referrals to hospital. Watford and Three Rivers PCT, £13.2 million in the red, has introduced “demand management”: no in-patient or day case is admitted before five months.
Sounds like a paradise for social darwinists and sudoku puzzle writers. I bet there’s no corruption in deciding who’s next in the queue.
The maxim holds: good, fast, and cheap; pick two. The NHS has already made the decision for those who can’t fly out of the country or pay for the licenses of British private practices. Socialized medicine is price fixing, and price fixing causes shortages when the price is too low. The shortage of medical care will go away when people decide what they are willing to pay for.
iggyantiochus on 
Dan
And yet socialism is supposed to be the worker’s paradise. Not really a paradise when they can’t get health care in their area and they can’t afford to pay for it somewhere else, is it?