As the U.S. is increasing government control, U.K. is decentralizing health care

[Jane Galt]

UK apparently doesn't have a regime that's trying to collapse the system
into communism, they've realized what an utter failure it is.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/As-
the-US-is-increasing-government-control-UK-is-decentralizing-health-care-
99198034.html

As the U.S. is increasing government control, U.K. is decentralizing health
care
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
07/25/10 2:02 PM EDT

The new government in the U.K. seems to be recognizing socialized medicine
is an expensive, bureaucratic albatross:

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in
the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in
one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite,
proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National
Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to
shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a
centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100
billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners,
who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health
care providers.

The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the
government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the
health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent.
Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would
be abolished.

Given that the U.S. is also embracing fiscal stimulus while Europe is
trying to get deficits and spending under control, it seems the Obama
administration wants America to be more European, just as Europe wants to
become more American.