World View: Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) Forced to Close Emergency Rooms

Junior Doctors Strike For 48 Hours
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

  • Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) forced to close emergency rooms
  • Syrian regime sending ‘leave or die’ text messages to Aleppo residents

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) forced to close emergency rooms

A patient in Britain is moved from an ambulance to an Accident & Emergency department. (Getty)
A patient in Britain is moved from an ambulance to an Accident & Emergency department. (Getty)

There have been plenty of recent stories about the financial collapse of Obamacare, and the astronomical increases in premiums – something that I predicted would happen that day after it was announced in 2009, because it was a repeat of President Nixon’s wage-price controls, which were supposed to lower the inflation rate from 4% to 2%, but instead increased it to 12%. The increases in Obamacare premiums are following the same pattern as Nixon’s price controls, as I predicted. Obamacare is a true financial disaster.

However, it has been less reported that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is also facing financial collapse.

As we reported a year ago, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is facing an existential crisis, with a huge and accelerating deficit expected to reach 22 billion pounds ($32 billion) by 2020.

The system is deeply corrupt, with doctors falsifying records, claiming for work that was never done, or putting in for bogus overtime. Dentistry services are so bad that people are buying “do-it-yourself (DIY) dentistry kits” to take care of their whole families, as was done centuries ago.

New reports indicate that about half the hospitals will have bed cuts, and one-third will close their Accident & Emergency departments (known in America as Emergency Rooms). Many maternity units will also be targeted for closure.

The country has been split into 44 areas, with each told to produce proposals to balance the books and change the way care is delivered. The UK now has fewer beds for its population than almost any country in Europe. One quarter of hospital beds have been closed in the last decade, with 37,000 fewer general and acute beds now than in 2006/7, taking levels of hospital occupancy to a record high. Telegraph (London) and Guardian (London)

Related Articles

Syrian regime sending ‘leave or die’ text messages to Aleppo residents

The long-expected mass slaughter of residents of east Aleppo by Russian and Syrian regime forces may finally be imminent, as the regime of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad is sending text messages to east Aleppo residents telling them to leave the area within 24 hours.

The text messages say the following:

To the armed people in the neighburhoods of east Aleppo, we are giving you 24 hours only to decide if you are leaving. Your leadership abroad is incapable of getting you out. Whoever wants to stay alive must drop his weapons and we will secure his safety. After the 24 hours is up we will implement a strategic attack using highly sophisticated weapons.

The opposition leadership that stays in hotels and castles enjoying a luxurious life doesn’t care about the poor Syrian citizens in east Aleppo. They are using you for their personal benefit. We are giving you, the sick and the wounded, 24 hours to exit if you want.

The use of text messages is a new tactic, as the regime has previously transmitted messages by dropping leaflets or using loudspeakers.

However, anti-government activists have told reporters that few people are actually reading the text messages, since there no electricity to charge mobile phones. Many believe that the text messages are no more than psychological warfare.

A new Russian naval war group, led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, has just arrived in at the coast of Syria, preparing for battle. East Aleppo has about 250,000 residents, already starving, mostly women and children, and the al-Assad regime has indicated that it wants to kill as many of them as possible. Al-Jazeera and Telegraph (London)

Related Articles

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Britain, National Health Service, NHS, Richard Nixon, Wage-price controls, Syria, Aleppo, Bashar al-Assad, Russia, Admiral Kuznetsov
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.