UK National health Service (NHS) pays for aromatherapy and other alternative medical care services, but skimps on Cancer care?
Wonder why a financially strapped national single payer system would bother with junk science “alternative” therapies like aroma therapy? Follow the politics.
John Goodman at National Center for Policy Analysis made his reputation partially by promoting Health Savings Accounts, but his think tank, worker bees and web site activity also promote small government and free markets on other matters.
Goodman has written very persuasively for years that there are myths promoted by single payer advocates and socialists that just aren’t so. Quality of American care is better by a bunch. Take away violent deaths and life expectancy in America is close to being number one, and serious medical care cases get better care in America by far.
Scott Atlas, Neuro-radiologist at Stanford, wrote a wonderful essay debunking of the WHO world health systems ratings game that scored American heathcare 37th in the world here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-worst-study-ever/
Atlas points out the cheating on methods and data (I know you’re shocked) done by WHO socialism advocates and their biased scoring system that makes socialist systems score high regardless of what they can do for sick people.
Goodman, Musgrave and Herrick did a fine job of comparing American Healthcare to single payer socialist care in Canada and UK in a 2004 book Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World that shows how socialist systems fail to provide and their outcomes on sick people are worse, and Americans have access to the best of technology and expertise.
How can socialist health care systems spend on politically popular projects or services that attract political support while squeezing big ticket tech and treatments? What’s good for the collective (the state) is the key and when the health system is politically controlled all kinds of “influences” are in play. For example–politicians pay attention to alternative medical advocacy groups just like they pay attention to alternative energy advocacy groups if there are campaign contributions made.
One Time I testified in a Texas Senate hearing opposed to a proposed Texas law that would allow Chiropractors to have hospital privileges so they could do spinal manipulations under general anesthesia. Chiropractic treatments can be helpful but their alignment and electrical energy theories are not medical science, but they are charming, well dressed and they contribute to political campaigns. When asked about their education they say they spend as many years getting educated as physicians and put up the hours of study on subjects that are the same as medical science subjects. It’s kinda like cargo cult science–isn’t it?
They show up in suits, sound like they had received good medical educations in terms of hours spent and they contribute to politicians.
I had a colleague who became a physician after he was a chiropractor and he splained to me that a typical back pain or auto accident whip lash case was, to him, a tally in the accounts receivable ledger, since they are very systematic about their approach to care. They know how many visits they will bill for and will be paid for by insurance. Chiropractic is a money making biz and they do well with what they have to offer but thy also are very politically astute. Politicians consider money from Chiropractors to be just as good as from other sources. Besides, some of what they do relieves musculo-skeletal problems. They are, too often, goofy on food supplements and vaccines, however, as part of their somewhat cultist ways.
So this little vignette about Aromatherapy makes sense, along with British National Health Service paying for baby sitters and some frills while skimping on the serious medical stuff. Cancer patients don’t do as well in socialist systems as they do in America since their needs are being measured against the needs of the collective.
http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/364590/uk-rations-cancer-drugs-pays-aromatherapy-wesley-j-smith
I must have had a rare, shining example of a chiropractor. I’ve never understood the stereotypes. There were never any witch doctor ramblings, only evidence based bone, joint, and muscle health, totally in line with anything out of the AMA. He was broadly against “revolutionary” untested supplements. Most importantly, he cured my wife’s migraines after a few months of therapy and easy-to-follow after care exercises and stretches she does at home for free. This is after her Neurologist failed to cure her with an off-label, $300-a-bottle anti-seizure medication that ended up giving her seizures. His proposed solution? Increase the dosage. I think it’s fair to say that quacks exist in all fields of expertise. I wouldn’t discount the benefits of sound, evidence-based physical therapy under a blanket indictment of chiropractors.
I think this is every bit as funny as the previous, just without the laugh track. If mass goes to “zero” then energy equals zero times the speed of light squared. And as you know anything times zero (sense) equals homeopathy.
The UK system of healthcare is despicable in that it provides silly things while promoting the Liverpool Pathway without consent and withholds services and resouces based on a NICE system of rationing. Shame on you for shilling for a cruel and ignorant socialism that represents the typical collectivist decline into mediocrity and inhumanity.
American Healthcare, the best on the planet, is available to anyone, whether they have insurance or are dependent on charity and governmental programs.
You don’t know anything about American Healthcare but what you read in the ignorant press or conjure up in your fertile leftist imagination.
A ridiculous article obviously written by someone with no first hand knowledge of the UK’s health system other than what he read in a notoriously populist right-wing tabloid (so-called) newspaper. Yes, aromatherapy is occasionally available and yes, some very expensive drugs that have been assessed as not particularly effective are controlled but it is a system which is free at the point of need to anyone with that need. Even the person who wrote this silly article would be entitled to instant care in the event of an accident or emergency without any question being asked as to the availability of insurance or any other method of payment. Try that in the States; all you might get would be emergency room treatment in a public hospital and even then I would emphasize the ‘might’! The UK’s system is based, as is most of Europe and the civilized world on need and not on the ability to pay.
Here is an explanation of how Homeopathy wortks – but you need to know about physics and chemistry to understand it! Not as fun as the video above, but it is amazing how many idiots are out there.
Not quite the same junk medicine but (sadly) funny nontheless.
It is also a lot cheaper to have folks sniff something and think they are cured rather than do a real diagnosis and procedures. They are capitalizing on the placebo effect.
I am sure they would let you sniff a few things rather than give you radiation treatment for cancer as well.
Everything nowadays seems to be done to benefit the extremely wealthy, and the politicians. The rest of us get poorer. They want to eliminate that pesky “middle class”.
Hi Grant…I wonder if O’blah O’blah Care will have aromatherapy too? The aroma from my old sneakers should cure something…:-) Franklin