On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Great Britain is making plans to decentralize it’s national health care system. As reported, exact details are still forthcoming. However, the goal of the reorganization will be to shift the billions the government spends on healthcare to local practitioners and shrink the massive bureaucratic administration, giving more power to patients and doctors at the local level and cutting costs across the board.

Andrew Lansely, the British health secretary, promised more power to patients as currently the majority of decisions are being made by 150 bureaucratic entities, called primary care trusts. This new plan would also eliminate some of of the government’s notorious rules on standards of care, like those which dictate how long patients must wait for certain treatments.

Looks like the British health care system which has served as a model for President Obama’s vision of health care might become more like the system the U.S. had prior to the passage of Obamacare. Hopefully, this news will cause some in the administration to re-think their strategies on health care reform.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 12:26 am and is filed under Blogroll, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.