‘Preventative’ healthcare is just an excuse for meddling in peoples’ lives
Patients have always been a problem for the NHS. If it wasn’t for the burden of people needing medical assistance, the system would work fine.
The health establishment has convinced itself that there would be less pressure on the NHS if people were healthier. This is widely believed and feels almost intuitive. As the Oxford Handbook of Health Economics drily notes, ‘it is frequently argued (but not by economists) that prevention will save expenditure on future treatment’. Economists are the exception because they have looked at the evidence and understand that while premature mortality can be prevented, mortality cannot. When people live longer they consume more healthcare, most of which is needed after retirement age, when they are taking more out of the tax pot than they put it.
Nevertheless, the myth that preventative health saves money persists. It acts as a handy distraction from the failings of the NHS and the inevitable costs that come from having an ageing population. It also gives paternalists an excuse for interfering in other people’s lives. Ask not what the NHS can do for you, but what you can do for the NHS.
3 comments:
Chatter about "preventative healthcare" is always tosh. Nobody knows how to prevent most illnesses. They end up prescribing rubbish such as statins - which do most people no good, do harm to a few - perhaps more than a few - but do just about do some measurable good for the small minority of people who have already had a heart attack. But even that's a fluke because they work, insofar as they work, not by reducing your cholesterol but by their mild anti-inflammatory action.
The bloody things have cost gazillions over the years. And as they fall out of patent protection more expensive alternatives have appeared which, as I understand it, seem not to extend life at all. Hardly surprising since their trials did not focus on mortality only on reduction in cholesterol.
There's one thing in "preventative healthcare" that I won't argue with, though. That's the advice to eat a healthy diet. I never argue with tautologies.
But does any of this detail matter? The medical trades established unmistakably during Covid that they cannot be trusted to be competent or diligent or truthful.
"Patients have always been a problem for the NHS. If it wasn’t for the burden of people needing medical assistance, the system would work fine."
So true: by comparison with simpler times, they no longer make any attempt to hide it.
dearieme - I never had much trust in the medical trades but Covid reduced it to the level of any other trade - check before you buy. No vaccinations for me unless the research looks good.
It's a pity because there are good people, but over the decades we've come across doctors who should never have been allowed to qualify. The profession will never eject them unless they do something so grossly embarrassing that even the media have to notice it.
Jannie - yes, if only we didn't try to contact them, our GP service would work smoothly.
Post a Comment