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Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!uu.warwick.ac.uk!kay
From: kay@uu.warwick.ac.uk
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re:  Poli-Sci Digest   V6 #78
Message-ID: <12245541292.68.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 20:47:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: RED.12245541292.68.MCGREW
Posted: Thu Oct  9 20:47:21 1986
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    mcgeer%sirius.berkeley.edu@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU writes:

>(1) Health care costs in England are lower because the standard of
>care in England is far lower.  Transplants, for example, are not done
>in England.  Has it ever occured to any of our Kennedyite
>correspondents that the only major new therapies we've seen in the
>last 15 years have been pioneered in the US?  Guess why.  Governments
>won't pay for experimental therapies.

Two points:

Transplants *are* done in England (and, FYI, throughout the rest of
the UK as well); yesterday (Sept 22nd) a 2 1/2 month old boy became
the youngest-ever combined heart-lung recipient.

I wonder why it might occur to them. (BTW, what *are* Kennedyites?)
What do you call a major new therapy?  would you not include in-vitro
fertilisation, pioneered by Patrick Steptoe, here in the UK?  and I
imagine that it's rather easier for a researcher to develop therapies
here than in the USA - aren't patients somewhat litigious over there?
This, at least, is what our media report.

>(2) Waste and fraud?  Well, Canada's medicare system is by all
>accounts far more effective than Britain's NHS.  But in Saskatchewan,
>some years back, the government announced that it was considering the
>establishment of a board to review elective surgery.  Hysterectomies
>immediately fell by 2/3.

And?  Presumably you're telling us this because you want to propose
the theory that 2/3 of hysterectomies are either wasteful or
fraudulent?  Mesured by what criteria?  In whose opinion?  I'm sorry
if I'm coming over more aggressive than I intend, but this newsgroup
seems riddled with anecdotes masquerading as evidence, circular proofs
and post hoc (never mind ad hominem!) arguments.  My logic and
rhetoric teacher would be shocked...

                                                        Kay.
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