X-Message-Number: 19779
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: National Health Services
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 11:41:01 +0100

National health services are of importance to cryonics, because many
people - I think the figure is about 80% - are under treatment in the period
leading up to their death. Cryonics is becoming a global phenomenon, and its
globalisation is increasing rapidly. Also the US government must have en eye
on the rest of the world and the health systems they run - if one is seen as
better than the system in the US, they may adopt it there.

In the UK where patients are put on long waiting lists there are brutal
economies because some die before they are treated. However there are also
severe wastages because many of  those that eventually get treatment cost a
lot more - I mean several thousand percent more - to deal with once they get
into the system. I would suspect that the overall effect is about the same
or worse than health services such as France and Germany where there are
wastages because staff are sometimes standing about with nothing to do.

In the latter case, unemployed staff could be put to work on research
projects.

In a "kill some of the patients by waiting" system, I know of three cases of
severe financial loss to the authorities.

Male mid 80s, left in nursing home with inadequate treatment, finally
required rehab in a geriatric hospital at an estimated cost of about $75,000
before being discharged home. Earlier assessment and simple treatment would
have made the costs no more than regular medication with common
pharmaceuticals.

Female early 80s received inadequate treatment from general practitioners,
eventually required over a week in hospital with two days under "special
care". Probably of the order of $50k. Again, earlier assessment would have
produced a result similar to the above.

Male late 50s kept in hospital for 7 weeks waiting simple angioplasty after
emergency admission. If he went home, he would lose his position in the
surgeon's list and may have to wait years on an outpatients' waiting list.
Probably $100k+. The actual cost of the operation, by the way was quoted at
about  $3k by a UK private hospital, and it took about an hour and didn't
even need a general anaesthetic.

I don't know many people, so this is obviously an unrepresentative sample,
but also it does suggest that it is extremely unlikely that these are in any
way unusual cases.

Clearly the authorities are incompetent in both a humanitarian and an
economic sense running a system like this, and change should be seen as
inevitable.

----- Original Message -----
> From: Olaf Henny <>
> Subject: Healtcare and Industrial Espionage
> In Message #19753 John Grigg <>
> wrote in part:
>
> >But you must remember that nations with universal health
> >care often make their citizens wait sometimes a LONG time
> >for the care they need.  Sometimes so long the person actually
> >dies.  So don't tell me the european approach is perfect.
>
<del>
>  Recently I had been given to understand, that in France and
> Germany there are no waiting lists for routine surgeries.

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