“Of course there will be ill people, the more important question is,

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

“Of course there will be ill people, the more important question is, are the waiting rooms more or less likely to be brimming with lots of ill people, therefore will the doctor have more time to spend with each patient or increase the times set for individual appointments?”

Pulled this part of the conversation out on it’s own as it allows for an interesting point.

IF all GP surgeries are over crowded with ill people etc… and the NHS is over worked. How would going to a partial private health care system change this without damaging the health of the nation?

I ask because it sounds like you are wanting a US style health care system, but possibly with a better safety net short to medium term (for people who have paid national insurance all their life).

In the US health care system the poor in society queue for hours for free health care when ever it is offered because they can not afford private health care insurance. Basically their health is not a high priority as they can’t afford to pay to be healthy.

The US style health care system is great for people who can afford it, but for those who can’t suffer and your ideas would push our health care system towards the US style (not suggesting you want to go exactly US style).

Makes you feel any better I’m stumped about what needs to be done regarding the NHS in the future. Unless we start making massive and cheap breakthroughs in health care (like a tablet we all take once a day for perfect health, wouldn’t that be great** :-)) as population grows and more are elderly and no longer contributing financially to the economy, something has to give.

** Would be great, but more of our population grows old and that’s more of a drain on other resources! As horrible as it might sound, people dieing relatively early (before retiring, but not too much before) is a good thing for the economy as they have contributed, but don’t become a drain on resources in old age!

I’m hoping science and technology provides the answers long term. NASA years ago created a report (cost millions) looking at the future and among other interesting concepts they set out plans for mining the moon with automated robotic factories that could build almost anything. We’d send up the resources to the moon to build one very large automated factory that would mine all the resources needed on the moon to build more automated factories. Within a generation we’d have something like a billion automated factories on the moon that could build pretty much provide anything we needed without using any resources on our planet. This would free up space for more people to live on the planet.

I know it all sounds science fiction, but this is from NASA research of what’s likely to be possible in the future. Probably not in ours or our children’s life times, but interesting to think long term of how the planet will cope with the challenges of the current unsustainable population growth ahead.

David