As the US introduces Obamacare, I do hope that the country does not start going down the route of cutting back on testing and medical care.
Despite having a per capita health spend more than double that of the UK, the US actually has poorer health outcomes.
Overtesting and over investigation is (with consequent poor health outcomes) is a recognised problem of the US system
Prevention, health education and public health interventions all contribute to a nation's health outcomes, just as much as the delivery of treatments. The reality is that the UK has for over 50 years consistently delivered better health outcomes than those of the US, and achieved that for a far smaller per capita spend. Of course life style, environmental and demographic differences have impacts - but the strength of a health care system is how it responds to those differences. Whether, for political or philosophical reasons one considers one system to be better than the other, costs in the US and the UK are driving change and there is simply no basis to believe that the UK will move to a US type model, because to do so would cause the vast majority of the UK population would lose out - despite hypothetical gains for some minorities (wealthy/well insured M.E/CFS sufferers ?).Assuming that is true, it may not necessarily be a reflection on the health service, but may reflect other factors such as diet and lifestyle.
Well you'd have to expect the US to get something for the $5,000 per person per year it spends more on health than does the UK citizen. Though frankly if all that is on offer is that list - I'd want my money back.Where are the brilliant pioneering ME/CFS researcher/clinicians in the UK? OK, we had the late Dr John Richardson, who did all the initial groundwork investigation connecting enteroviral infections to the subsequent development of ME/CFS. But we are terribly short of researcher/clinicians like Drs Chia, Peterson, Cheney, Lerner, Klimas, Lapp and Enlander.
Service level funding and research funding have little relationship. Research funding of all science in the UK is woefully below that of the US, however despite the far better research environment in the US, investment in M.E/CFS research has still been abysmally low. Where is the replicated research of these mythically able researcher/clinicians ? If there is one thing missing from M.E/CFS research it is funding for work carried by pre and post doctorate researchers - the young bright minds that bring new thinking. That 'new thinking' is not going to come from a whole army of near retirement clinicians operating out of private institutions, putting out the occasional paper that no one outside of a self referencing clique, takes seriously.My view is that this shortage of ME/CFS researcher/clinicians is due to structural factors in the way European versus US health systems are set up.
Prevention, health education and public health interventions all contribute to a nation's health outcomes, just as much as the delivery of treatments.
If there is one thing missing from M.E/CFS research it is funding for work carried by pre and post doctorate researchers - the young bright minds that bring new thinking. That 'new thinking' is not going to come from a whole army of near retirement clinicians operating out of private institutions, putting out the occasional paper that no one outside of a self referencing clique, takes seriously.
The UK NHS is great if you have a recognized condition that gets the attention and funding it deserves. Diabetes for example. But, if you have an illness like ME (but not just ME there are many other people with difficult to treat, little understood illnesses) then you are screwed.