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Table 1

Selected Features of British NHS, Part One

Annual Number

Nonemergency ambulance rides

15,000,000

Missed physician appointments

10,000,000

Patients receiving nonmedical services

1,500,000

Source: “Community Care Statistics 2000/2001, Referrals, Assessments and Package of Care for Adults,” U.K.

Department of Health, 2001.

Table 2

Selected Features of British NHS, Part Two

Annual Number

Home alterations

375,000

Occupational therapy

456,000

Day care services

260,000

Home care/home help services

578,000

Source: “Community Care Statistics 2000/2001, Referrals, Assessments and Package of Care for Adults,” U.K.

Department of Health, 2001.

year--about one ride for every three people in

as the most bizarre is the way in which limit-

Britain.101 Almost 80 percent of these rides

ed resources are allocated. Foreign govern-

ments do not merely deny lifesaving medical

are for such nonemergency purposes as tak-

technology to patients under national insur-

ing an outpatient to a hospital or a senior to

ance schemes. They also take money that

a pharmacy and amount to little more than

While thousands

could be spent saving lives and curing disease

free taxi service (see Table 1). While thou-

of people die

and spend it serving people who are not seri-

sands of people die each year from lack of

ously ill. Often, the spending has little if any-

kidney dialysis, the NHS provides an array of

each year from

thing to do with health care.

comforts for chronically ill people with less

lack of kidney

The British National Health Service's

serious health problems. For example, the

emphasis on "caring" rather than "curing"

NHS provides nonmedical services to about

dialysis, the NHS

marks a radical difference between British

1.5 million people a year. These include day

provides an array

and American health care. The tendency

care services to more than 260,000, home

of comforts for

throughout the NHS is to divert funds from

care or home help services to 578,000, home

expensive care for the small number who are

alterations for 375,000, and occupational

chronically ill

therapy for 300,000 (See Table 2).102

seriously ill toward the large number who

people with less

seek relatively inexpensive services for minor

More than one million people are waiting

to be admitted to NHS hospitals,103 but the

ills. Take British ambulance service, for exam-

serious health

ple. British "patients" take between 18 mil-

equivalent of 1,692 full-time doctors are tied

problems.

lion and 19 million ambulance rides each

up waiting for patients who do not appear for

18