Comments on: Polly Today

By: Neil Harding

Neil Harding — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:02:49 +0000

Tim, the figures are for 1998 to 2000 when the NHS was on its knees after 18 Tory years of being run down, and yet mortality is still higher in New York. Avoidable Mortality is open to all sorts of interpretation anyway. Take a look at this link;

http://snowflake5.blogspot.com/2008/06/nhs-at-60.html

tim adds: Neil, Polly specifically chose “avoidable mortality”. Thus so did I. Get it?

By: Tim Newman

Tim Newman — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:22:13 +0000

i.e the period still heavily damaged by the Tory years of under-spend and managerial interference.

Did Labour ever agree a date when this finally stopped being a credible excuse for all their own failures?

By: Neil Harding

Neil Harding — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:56:50 +0000

Tim, I followed your link it actually says this:-

“The authors find that Paris has the lowest mortality rates and New York has the highest mortality rates with London in between”.

Which correlates exactly with how much each country spends on tax-funded healthcare – the more you spend, the lower the mortality.

Also if you follow the link (on a blog advertising BUPA healthcare) to the actual paper cited you find it was only looking at the 1998-2000 period – i.e the period still heavily damaged by the Tory years of under-spend and managerial interference.

Tim adds: Neil, are you feeling especially dense today? Polly was talking about “avoidable mortality”. As was the part that I quoted.

By: Vindico

Vindico — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:57:05 +0000

If Polly had a brain she would be dangerous. Luckily she is still plugged in to the Guardian hive brain cell.

And I’m with QuestionThat, what is she on about, the daft cow?

By: QuestionThat

QuestionThat — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:52:45 +0000

I was baffled by this part:

“It’s a puzzle why anyone thinks the NHS becomes less affordable the richer we get. Health is a discretionary good and we can spend whatever we choose – but it’s cheaper for all to buy it collectively.”

I’m not at all sure what she’s talking about. I’m not sure she’s sure either!

By: Matthew Sinclair

Matthew Sinclair — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:40:06 +0000

This report of mine has a long time series for mortality amenable to healthcare compared to a panel of European countries:

http://tpa.typepad.com/home/files/wasting_lives.pdf

Yes we’re catching up with Europe (that’s to be expected even in the absence of chucking money at it – standard catch-up effects) but really slowly and we caught up at exactly the same pace before and after the spending binge (in fact, as far back as Thatcher’s day).