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| Representing the Swedish health service (as per Swedish media) |
As I usually post something about The World This Weekend on a Sunday I suppose I should do so today too.
I read a comment elsewhere before listening to it today, and as Matthew Price (a man who always sounds as if he's got the weight of the world on his SJW warrior shoulders) was presenting, I suspected the comment would ring true once I'd listened to it.
The comment, which went into interesting detail, accused The World This Weekend of not telling the truth about the Swedish health system, of pushing the left-wing BBC view that more tax payers money is the only way forward for our NHS, and of not featuring one dissenting voice.
The commenter wrote:
Sadly for the BBC some of us are aware that the old tax payer funded NHS styled health service is no longer available in Sweden. The Swedes found it didn’t work, (surprise!). Instead doctors charge for an appointment, about £12, and a fee is paid for a hospital examination. All prescriptions are paid for. The private sector provides about 20% of public hospital care and about 30% of public primary care.
On listening to it myself I found that Matthew Price did actually say, though only in passing and rather vaguely, that Swedish people do have to pay fees and that the private sector is involved in the Swedish system. The commenter must have missed that. (In fairness, it was so short if you blinked you could have missed it). And two Tory voices - Nick Boles and Andrew Lansley - gave differing right-leaning views on the matter.
I think the problem here is that Matthew isn't exactly Mr Cheery and is prone to emotive, 'award winning' reporting. As a result it sounded more of a SJW piece than it actually was.
Well, that's my theory anyhow. As ever, please feel free to disagree.
P.S. If you read Matthew's Twitter feed - @BBCMatthewPrice - you'll find him being very 'Matthew Price' too.
And re-tweeting pro-EU, government-bashing tweets from prominent Remainers. And backing Carrie Gracie. And linking to a controversial far-left Israel-bashing blog and calling a strongly Israel-bashing piece of its an "interesting read".
He's very 'BBC', our Matthew, isn't he?
P.S. If you read Matthew's Twitter feed - @BBCMatthewPrice - you'll find him being very 'Matthew Price' too.
And re-tweeting pro-EU, government-bashing tweets from prominent Remainers. And backing Carrie Gracie. And linking to a controversial far-left Israel-bashing blog and calling a strongly Israel-bashing piece of its an "interesting read".
He's very 'BBC', our Matthew, isn't he?
It's like one of those pub games...who would you least like turning up at your hospital bed with a microphone after you were caught up in some murderous attack and lying there with one or two limbs missing: Matthew Price, Orla Guerin or Fergal Keane?
ReplyDeleteNow that's one very hard pub game! Are players allowed to play their 'Get out of jail free' card and say they'd prefer to shoot themselves rather than be interviewed by any of that lot?
DeleteCraig, your comment "the left-wing BBC view that more tax payers money is the only way forward for our NHS" reminded me of a feature on R4 "More or Less" this week.
ReplyDeleteIt had been excitedly trailed for a few days that the program would debunk the NHS claim that missed appointments costs the NHS one billion a year, or 120 pounds per appointment. Sure enough the program interviewed an "expert" who told us that the cost of missed appointments was actually zero because of over-booking and because the NHS staff don't do nothing when a patient fails to turn up. Dubious. But the program was generally exultant about "proving" the real cost is zero. Why so pleased about what is at best just thoughtless?
All was revealed in the final concluding sentence ... the presenter stated that this was proof that the NHS crisis cannot be solved by avoiding missed appointments, but ONLY BY GIVING IT MORE MONEY. Boom Boom!
Sounds like a typical politically motivated More or Less piece. Of course once you've stumped up all the money, then the MARGINAL cost of a missed appointment is close to zero. However, equally if no appointments were consistently missed then clearly there would be huge savings to the NHS. It doesn't take a genius or even a low IQ More of Less team to work that out.
DeleteThis is indicative of the really low quality of most BBC programmes these days.
I don't think you understand finance as well as you think, Monkey Brains. It's not about marginal cost, it's about actual cost. Airlines do it as well. If you have a consistent 5% no-show rate, then you can overbook by 5.26 %. You're right that the system would work nicely if nobody ever failed to attend their appointments, but I prefer to confine myself to plausible reality.
Delete