Women shrieking In the Sport of Tennis Compared to other Sports.

It is well recognised that in recent years the sport of women's tennis has become characterised by certain players and the various noises emanating from their mouths when striking a tennis ball.  Sometimes that noise starts before the ball is hit, sometimes the noise starts after the ball is hit.  Sometimes the noise extends into the opponents play.  The shrieks emanating from Victoria Sharapova and Venus Williams has sometimes caused the crowd to laugh and to make sensitive children cry.  Azarenka has a strange extended shriek that extends into the opponents play.  Some people have compared the Azarenka shriek to Chinese water drip torture.  Some people have compared the Sharapova and Venus Williams shriek to a Jumbo Jet taking off.

Anyway my question is - is this just a women's tennis thing or does it extend to other sports?  In squash and badminton and singles volleyball there are no such shrieks. There may be the occasional cry and the occasional audible exhalation of breath, but it seems to me there is nothing to compare with the women shriekers that populate the sport of tennis.  [I think the shrieks are "voiced" rather than "unvoiced" - requiring resonance of the vocal chords].

In the sporting arena there is the occasional cry from the field athletes, shot putters, javelin, discus - but it is not repetitive and it is diluted in the enormous arena of the athletics stadium.

Personally I am physically unable to watch women's tennis which contains a shrieker - I just can't stand the noise, I find it irritating, it stops me from thinking about the match, it breaks my concentration, I get a headache, I have to leave or switch off.  Not all women's tennis players shriek.  The WTA don't seem to do anything about it.  

From all the recent discussion about "WTA being a parasitic organisation", "prize money equality", "market value"  ... it makes me wonder whether the WTA are really being responsive to its market, the spectators, the viewers.  I suspect it is being shielded from its market by the success in the Men's Game (with or without Federer and Nadal) and the way it attaches itself to the Men's Game..  I won't go as far as saying the WTA has a parasitic relationship to the ATP but I remain open minded about that label.

I think Seles brought the current shriek we see, then she went and later Sharapova came, and WTA hungry for some good looking and a young champion kept it going.

It's annoying and I assume energy sapping too, all that shriek.

Also to some extent to annoy the opponent.

I've seen Djoko shriek quite good a few years ago at Basel Open, and Live & Indoors, he sounds quite bad too at times.

The OP is spot on, in particular by observing the effect on any activity when it is shielded from market forces. As soon as a product no longer has to compete for it's customer to earn money it gets complacent and self-absorbed. You see it all the time in so-called "producer captured" organisations like the NHS and teaching, and in monopoly positions in big corporations when their income is secured because they have relationships with the government.

If the WTA had to earn every cent of prize money from it's own customers you can bet that the players would be asked to make a more consumer-friendly product, and those players you mention would be told to cut it out. As it is they don't have to, because their money comes heavily from being in the same venue as Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and so on.

bb, whats with you and NHS? Had a bad experience? Try Bupa

^It's a monopoly that costs £115bn per year (and rising) but remains exempt from critical scrutiny because it's a left wing shibboleth.

The big shock to me is that BB got through that post without a single mention of the BBC!

Jahu wrote:bb, whats with you and NHS? Had a bad experience? Try Bupa

No bad experiences, it's just how things are. I don't mean to pick on them and it's not restricted to public sector by any means, there are loads of private sector examples - it's just what happens as soon as people don't need to sing the song their audience wants to hear for their supper.

EDIT: Ah, the BBC. I'd forgotten about them......

The problem with the NHS is that it is not affordable. Too many NHS operations are for procedures that are not to save life nor to restore or maintain health. There are also "lifestyle operations". I also know of NHS "tourists" from the EU.

The alternatives to NHS aren't exactly raging flaming successes though

kingraf wrote:The alternatives to NHS aren't exactly raging flaming successes though

The question is not are any huge successes but are any better than the NHS?

The UK rarely comes top in European healthcare assessments, so it would seem that there are at least lessons that could be learned from other countries and, quite probably, other models that would be more effective.

The political climate in this country makes that an impossible discussion to have though.

Nore Staat wrote:I also know of NHS "tourists" from the EU.

There equally tourist nurses and Doctors too, shortage of local staff.

Now let's all shriek a little

Jahu wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:I also know of NHS "tourists" from the EU.

There equally tourist nurses and Doctors too, shortage of local staff.

Now let's all shriek a little

Exactly the kind of argument that causes the problems.

Are we saying that because the NHS employs people from outside the UK, then it must also treat people from outside the UK (who haven't contributed to its cost) for free? Because that way lies funding crises.

Let see what happens with EU exit, than UK can have their rules.

Of course it must treat people from outside of UK, where would Romanian prostitutes around Camden Locks be cured? Fly them back to Romania?

Jahu wrote:Let see what happens with EU exit, than UK can have their rules.

Of course it must treat people from outside of UK, where would Romanian prostitutes around Camden Locks be cured? Fly them back to Romania?

Strangely, this detail has not been discussed in the referendum debate...

I guess Politicians enjoy local ladies, covered by NHS

Write to your local MP asap

I seem to recall from my 'O' level Government, Economics & Politics lessons that the relationships between supply, demand and price suggested that demand would increase as price fell.

Now, given we are wedded to the concept of an NHS free at the point of delivery, is there anyone in the class able to forecast what would happen to demand for healthcare services when the price is zero? Anyone?

For a bonus point, can anyone also imagine what happens to drug prices when patents provide monopoly control over drugs and people are demanding them for free from politicians who will lose their jobs if they are shown not to worship the NHS?

The biggest surprise in this inevitable collapse is that anyone can be surprised.

Makes sense, but next Election will be won by Labour and they will pump billions into NHS and get it to good shape in next 8 years, then lose election again, and Cons cutting again, and cycle goes on and on.

Hope Nore does not mind us derailing his thread

Jahu wrote:Makes sense, but next Election will be won by Labour and they will pump billions into NHS and get it to good shape in next 8 years, then lose election again, and Cons cutting again, and cycle goes on and on.

Hope Nore does not mind us derailing his thread

Conservatives aren't cutting NHS spending. They don't dare.

Jahu wrote:... Hope Nore does not mind us derailing his thread

The OP still stands so anyone can respond to that directly.  I don't see any reason why the same thread can't contain additional discussion on matters arising from earlier comments.  Derailing brings to mind a home steel industry unable to supply trains with tracks due to regulation inequalities that exist between the UK and China.

HM Murdock wrote:^It's a monopoly that costs £115bn per year (and rising) but remains exempt from critical scrutiny because it's a left wing shibboleth.

The big shock to me is that BB got through that post without a single mention of the BBC!

That cost is not that much though if you see it in perspective, I believe actually that as a proportion of GDP, the NHS is actually lower than most advanced countries.

I know the US for example has more doctors per head of population; and their whole population isn't even medically insured unlike the UK. Obviously I go to hospitals, and the situation is very sad. The doctors I shadow are working 14 hour shifts without a break, and due to gaps in number of doctors, I've even seen quite a few instances of doctors having to work 24+ hours in a row to cover. Obviously you have to be tough, but I think most humans would feel it's frankly exhausting, and it's pretty scary to see. You work 23 hours without any sleep, and one mistake and someone dies.
Also I can absolutely guarantee you that vast majority of junior doctors work already above the hours they are paid for. Atleast 2 hours extra, I've never seen someone leave the hospital when they're meant to. To be fair if they did, patients would literally suffer, so they would have to be amoral to say 'ok times up it's 5pm, ready to go, oh sorry about the patients I haven't covered yet, hope you get reincarnated as something good next time'.
NHS needs to manage to curb the demand. Prevention methods to stop obesity related issues, as well as tobacco and alcohol. Also I'm pro-EU, but I think it's unfair that if a Brit goes to France we have to pay for healthcare, but if a French person comes here they get it for free. A fair system, in or out of the EU, could be that you get the healthcare in UK that you would get in your home country (cost-wise). Current high demand just not sustainable.

Nore Staat wrote:Derailing brings to mind a home steel industry unable to supply trains with tracks due to regulation inequalities that exist between the UK and China.

And a domestic energy policy that:

- imposes a carbon floor price four times larger than the EU average.
- charges energy prices for the steel industry twice the EU average.
- aims to raise energy prices by nearly 50% by 2020 for large energy users.
- charges business rates for the steel industry 10 times larger than Germany and France.

It's truly idiotic. The whole purpose of these taxes is to make life harder for industries such as steel that use a lot of energy.

And then, when we reach a point when a business no longer becomes viable, there's shock among the political class.

They're all equally culpable. It started with a Mr E Milliband and was willingly embraced by the Tories and Libs alike.

Still, at least the problem of all that nasty 'carbon' (sic) is being addressed...

It Must Be Love wrote:The doctors I shadow are working 14 hour shifts without a break, and due to gaps in number of doctors, I've even seen quite a few instances of doctors having to work 24+ hours in a row to cover. Obviously you have to be tough, but I think most humans would feel it's frankly exhausting, and it's pretty scary to see. You work 23 hours without any sleep, and one mistake and someone dies.  
Also I can absolutely guarantee you that vast majority of junior doctors work already above the hours they are paid for. Atleast 2 hours extra, I've never seen someone leave the hospital when they're meant to.

They should go and work for someone else.

Oh no, they can't. It's a state monopoly.

HM Murdock wrote:

It Must Be Love wrote:The doctors I shadow are working 14 hour shifts without a break, and due to gaps in number of doctors, I've even seen quite a few instances of doctors having to work 24+ hours in a row to cover. Obviously you have to be tough, but I think most humans would feel it's frankly exhausting, and it's pretty scary to see. You work 23 hours without any sleep, and one mistake and someone dies.  
Also I can absolutely guarantee you that vast majority of junior doctors work already above the hours they are paid for. Atleast 2 hours extra, I've never seen someone leave the hospital when they're meant to.

They should go and work for someone else.

Oh no, they can't. It's a state monopoly.

I'm not sure how patients who can't afford their living costs such as rents already, would feel about doctors leaving the NHS for private firms.

Btw I found this for you:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/media/web-2_v5.jpg

In terms of the first link, again like the tennis GOAT debate, this doesn't 'prove' it's necessarily the best, but it shows the system is not as bad as critics say.
The second one is pure figures; infact you can see from both links, that just numbers wise we pay less per GDP than vast majority of advanced countries for healthcare. IMO we should raise spending to match the proportion of GDP as France.

HM Murdock wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:Derailing brings to mind a home steel industry unable to supply trains with tracks due to regulation inequalities that exist between the UK and China.

And a domestic energy policy that:

- imposes a carbon floor price four times larger than the EU average.
- charges energy prices for the steel industry twice the EU average.
- aims to raise energy prices by nearly 50% by 2020 for large energy users.
- charges business rates for the steel industry 10 times larger than Germany and France.

It's truly idiotic. The whole purpose of these taxes is to make life harder for industries such as steel that use a lot of energy.

And then, when we reach a point when a business no longer becomes viable, there's shock among the political class.

They're all equally culpable. It started with a Mr E Milliband and was willingly embraced by the Tories and Libs alike.

Still, at least the problem of all that nasty 'carbon' (sic) is being addressed...

Well that saved me a LOT of typing!

HM Murdock wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:Derailing brings to mind a home steel industry unable to supply trains with tracks due to regulation inequalities that exist between the UK and China.

And a domestic energy policy that:

- imposes a carbon floor price four times larger than the EU average.
- charges energy prices for the steel industry twice the EU average.
- aims to raise energy prices by nearly 50% by 2020 for large energy users.
- charges business rates for the steel industry 10 times larger than Germany and France.

It's truly idiotic. The whole purpose of these taxes is to make life harder for industries such as steel that use a lot of energy.

And then, when we reach a point when a business no longer becomes viable, there's shock among the political class.

They're all equally culpable. It started with a Mr E Milliband and was willingly embraced by the Tories and Libs alike.

Still, at least the problem of all that nasty 'carbon' (sic) is being addressed...

Thanks for the information.  I knew E Milliband was "with the fairies" by examining his record in his department of climate and energy.   This so called environment and climate policies to save the planet do the exact opposite because they are not global regulations they are national / regional regulations.  All the buyer does is buy the cheapest stuff from the dirtiest industries outside the regulated zone.  Then this is imported half round the world creating more pollution.  It's a policy that just doesn't help the environment.  All it does is destroy local manufacturing and industry while sanctioning the most polluting industries with the poorest record for human rights in China and elsewhere.

It Must Be Love wrote:IMO we should raise spending to match the proportion of GDP as France.

The problem here is that GDP can go down as well up, but no government will ever reduce the NHS budget because we're locked into a narrative of cuts = evil, privatisation = evil.

I don't actually have a strong opinion on the NHS. On the various surveys and assessments I see, it's good in some respects and not so good in others. No health model seems perfect, so I don't view the NHS as uniquely good or uniquely bad.

What I strongly object to is the way it has become a modern secular religion and any criticism of it is apostasy.

Health receives more public money than any government department apart from pensions. It should be thoroughly scrutinised to make sure we are getting value for money. If there are ways it can be made better, they should be pursued.

But a government is not able to do this (I should probably say "too afraid" to do this) because they know they will be immediately castigated by the usual suspects.

It Must Be Love wrote:

HM Murdock wrote:^It's a monopoly that costs £115bn per year (and rising) but remains exempt from critical scrutiny because it's a left wing shibboleth.

The big shock to me is that BB got through that post without a single mention of the BBC!

That cost is not that much though if you see it in perspective, I believe actually that as a proportion of GDP, the NHS is actually lower than most advanced countries.

I know the US for example has more doctors per head of population; and their whole population isn't even medically insured unlike the UK. Obviously I go to hospitals, and the situation is very sad. The doctors I shadow are working 14 hour shifts without a break, and due to gaps in number of doctors, I've even seen quite a few instances of doctors having to work 24+ hours in a row to cover. Obviously you have to be tough, but I think most humans would feel it's frankly exhausting, and it's pretty scary to see. You work 23 hours without any sleep, and one mistake and someone dies.  
Also I can absolutely guarantee you that vast majority of junior doctors work already above the hours they are paid for. Atleast 2 hours extra, I've never seen someone leave the hospital when they're meant to. To be fair if they did, patients would literally suffer, so they would have to be amoral to say 'ok times up it's 5pm, ready to go, oh sorry about the patients I haven't covered yet, hope you get reincarnated as something good next time'.
NHS needs to manage to curb the demand. Prevention methods to stop obesity related issues, as well as tobacco and alcohol. Also I'm pro-EU, but I think it's unfair that if a Brit goes to France we have to pay for healthcare, but if a French person comes here they get it for free. A fair system, in or out of the EU, could be that you get the healthcare in UK that you would get in your home country (cost-wise). Current high demand just not sustainable.

The problems with your socialized healthcare system are laughable compared to the American system which is by far the most privatized in the developed world. My mother had a cyst removed and the hospital billed her insurance (not the surgery) for just one night in a hospital where all they did was observe her with a nurse walking in every couple of hours and they billed her insurance 50, 000 dollars. One non-cancerous cyst being removed and one basic surgery cost more than 100k. If she didn't have insurance and poor she would have to wait till a cyst turned cancerous, declare bankruptcy and then throw herself on the mercy of the government again who would then end up paying 20 times the figure I discussed to solve a problem that could have been solved with a routine surgery. The unchecked free market doesn't lead to perfect competition over and over again it has shown that it leads to monopoly and oligarchy. The American healthcare system prior to Obamacare, outside of caring for those on assistance or the very old was by far the most expensive in the world. Why it is controlled by a few regional powerhouses that have conspired to push prices to ever more profitable highs because they can. No one is saying that government is the solution to every problem but the idea that the free market is perfect and with good competition you get the best of everything all the time I think is pretty silly. What we have seen is that without government regulation that most supposedly free markets really end up through consolidation (to raise prices not to reduce them) being run by cartels and monopolies. At some point the biggest competitors succeed in wiping out the choice and price competition that they claim is the lifeblood of pure capitalism.

This is not supposition, this is actually what happened when we had the libertarian utopia of small neutered national government that kept its nose out of business. It was called the 19th century, those selling you the utopia of doing away with the government should study that period. In that period every major huge industry, with some excepetions was controlled by a monopoly or a cartel that would set prices completely devoid of competition. Not to mention the biggest problem of that period the fact that the so-called perfect unregulated free market crashed in massive deflationary depressions like clockwork every 20 years. They weren't called Depressions in that period they were much more truthful with their lingo they were called panics. And if you think a neutered government (in 1900 US nationl government accounted for 2 percent of GDP now its like in the mid 30s) small government that stays out of business is the way to go I invite you to research the panics of 1817,1837,1857,1873, 1893, and 1906. We are talking about massive deflationary events that ruined millions over night, not your typical inflationary recession we experienced in the modern age prior to 2007. By the way Alan Greenspan, noted limited government conservative admitted that doing away with government regulation of the financial sector was the reason for the crash as it gave rise to the shadow banking world we still live in to some extent.

Jahu wrote:Makes sense, but next Election will be won by Labour and they will pump billions into NHS and get it to good shape in next 8 years, then lose election again, and Cons cutting again, and cycle goes on and on.

Hope Nore does not mind us derailing his thread

Pretty good, except for a few errors

- Labour have 0 chance of winning the next election.
- Brown didn't so much pump billions into the NHS as pump billions onto the wage bill.
- The Cons are increasing spending in real terms, just not enough to cope with the higher demand and higher prices.

The problem is the lack of real competition. Forget crony capitalism of the sort practised by the governments favourite suppliers, I run a food factory and I can tell you that food these days is made in better quality environments and to better recipe / quality control than ever before, at far lower cost than ever, and in a safer environment than ever. Why? Because there is true healthy competition and customers buy on price and quality, and there is free entry to the market - if you have the money you can join the game.

If you want a brilliant Health Service you have people buy the service from the likes of Sainsbury or M&S, who would be competing to offer new, better and cheaper services and have them in turn buy the services from people like me. I would establish a specialised facility (e.g. for something like hip / joint replacement) and would run it like a streamlined, modern "manufacturing" process. The current hospital model is akin to a factory that tries to make every kind of food - which would be hopeless - whereas the specialists will always be able to focus and deliver incredible performance.

Seriously socal?

- look at my food supply analogy - all privately run and phenomenally cost effective and high quality. You have to ask what's the difference between your crappy hospitals and the leading food producers, and why.
- the free market always works; the problem is monopolies, which are always caused by the State. The banking f up is all about State sponsored monopolies and the suspension of the rule of law and business (fraud, Director liability, investor risk).
- you seriously think the World economy has been rescued? Honest? It's sat on life support of free money (now we're moving the negative interest rates!!!!) and it's all going to collapse like 2008 was a party (with the possible exception that they will effectively go communist and take everyone's wealth off them).

"most supposedly free markets really end up through consolidation (to raise prices not to reduce them) being run by cartels and monopolies"

True, but only when barriers to entry are raised and monopolies encouraged - which can only be done by the State.

I agree with what Socal just said, but I don't want to go into the free market vs some government intervention economics debate, as we've had that before- I'll just stick to healthcare.

HM Murdoch wrote:Health receives more public money than any government department apart from pensions. It should be thoroughly scrutinised to make sure we are getting value for money. If there are ways it can be made better, they should be pursued.

Fully agree HM. All I'd say is we have to also look at the numbers, we are spending less than most advanced nations as a percentage of GDP, and due to factors such as birth rate, better medicine, and immigration- NHS has higher increase in demand than resources.

bogbrush wrote:Seriously socal?

- look at my food supply analogy - all privately run and phenomenally cost effective and high quality
- the free market always works; the problem is monopolies, which are always caused by the State. The banking f up is all about State sponsored monopolies and the suspension of the rule of law and business (fraud, Director liability, investor risk).
- you seriously think the World economy has been rescued? Honest? It's sat on life support of free money (now we're moving the negative interest rates!!!!) and it's all going to collapse like 2008 was a party (with the possible exception that they will effectively go communist and take everyone's wealth off them).

The world economy hasn't been rescued because unfortunately silly conservative economic ideas that have gone unchanged since the time of Adam Smith infested our financial markets. Lets remember that for 70 years the social safety net and the activist welfare state kept the bogey of massive global deflationary depressions away. When conservatives in America convinced Wall Street Dems like Clinton that we should do away with rules in the financial sector (see repeal of Glass Steagall) the money guys basically did what they did over and over and over and over again in the heyday of pure capitalism the damn 19th. They crashed the crap out of the economy. If you don't believe me please youtube (alan greenspan testimony Waxman committee). All of sudden we went from having rules for loans and what type of investments banks and insurance companies could invest in to this bizarre world Insurance companies act as hedge funds and you can 110 percent loans to equity. Poopie on television they were selling more home loan adds than for anything else.

The fact is that we had a neutered national government and it was a giant sheet storm BB. And from my experience you can not look at your personal experience in one business and extrapolate that to everything else. The rules that govern macroeconomics are completely different than the rules of micro-economics you know that. The government is not your local pizza parlor the same rules don't apply.

You do realize that everything Adam Smith wrote about how perfect free markets are was based on zero statistical analysis and zero research, you know why because nothing like that kind of information existed in 1790. You need to update your software my friend, because the claims you make here about perfect free markets with government always bad, is exactly what Mr. Smith came up with from his observations. He was a great thinker and created a new science but unfortunately liberatarians and conservatives think economics was perfected in 1790.

Bogbrush wrote:If you want a brilliant Health Service you have people buy the service from the likes of Sainsbury or M&S, who would be competing to offer new, better and cheaper services and have them in turn buy the services from people like me.

You're a bit naive if you think health service is going to work like M&S and Sainsbury's competing. Let me explain why:
My dad works as a doctor, and he mainly works with NHS but also does some stuff for private companies. So he has experience of inner workings of both.
The private health companies are not altruistic. This year they sent out letters to all doctors in the dept with a comparison of how many scans they were doing for insured patients. Again as patients are already paying insurance, scans cost money for the healthcare firms. My dad's colleague was giving out the most scans, so got removed from a certain list of advertised doctors for 2 years, which obviously would mean he has a substantial loss of income, and huge disincentive for him to send patients to scan in future, even if they are needed.
So that means doctors will find it difficult to act just in the best interest of patients.
I'll give you other examples, from India where there are many private hospitals. My dad's friend said how private hospitals have made doctors do unnecessary operations on patients who are nearly dead anyway, so they can then charge huge money. Many doctors were threatened with being fired if they didn't increase profits in these ways. And there's absolutely no way the families of patients will know what's happened.

The reason it's not like Tesco, is that you know more or less if a food is rotten, or if it's not tasty. Next time I'll go to Morrisons, no more Tesco for me. Frankly delusional if you think that's parallel with healthcare.
General public simply don't have the knowledge, which you need to make an informed judgement. We can make 'trip advisor' style websites, but that would be useless. Some patients will read up on Google or Yahoo answers and demand things that obviously are unnecessary, these people are likely to leave complaints irrelevant of the care. League tables between companies are practically impossible and very unreliable as there are so many factors such as pre-existing conditions, genetics, lifestyle.
So it's much better to have a healthcare system which prioritises care first, and not profits.

Think pragmatically BB.

It Must Be Love wrote:I don't want to go into the free market vs some government intervention economics debate, as we've had that before- I'll just stick to healthcare.

I generally tend toward the free market but with regard to health care, there are certain problems that I don't think the free market can avoid.

(I'd be interested to hear BB's views on this)

Firstly, some types of healthcare are unavoidably expensive, either in direct payment or in insurance premiums.

A strength of the free market, is that it provides variety. If I can't afford a £100 pair of shoes, I can buy a cheaper pair that aren't as good. When applied to products, this is a good thing. Owning a cheap pair of shoes is better than not owning any shoes.

When applied to health care though, I don't think buying something "not as good" is really an option. A person could literally have a lower life expectancy purely down to how much money they have.

Also...

The trend of free markets is that products and services improve over time. This is undeniable. Along the way though, there are inevitably mis-steps - poor business models, products that aren't up to standard. The free market weeds these out because they don't survive.

This is fine if I'm buying a television, a suit, or my groceries. If I buy something sub-standard, it doesn't really matter in the long term. I can buy a better product next time.

In health care, the fact of buying a weaker product could mean that there is not a next time!

So my feeling is that the free market is not a perfect fit for healthcare.

Intuitively, I think that a hybrid solution may be the best one - the government pays for health care via taxation but some or all services are contracted to the private sector. Health care companies could bid for a government contract as they do in other sectors.

That method would ensure universal health care but wouldn't depend on a huge state monolith needing to be a specialist in everything. It would also expose the sector to at least a degree of the innovation and quality that comes from a free market.

Just my thoughts.

Don't fall for the privatization BS Murdock, the reason that America pays one in six dollars of our gdp for healthcare and still has tens of millions with no coverage is exactly because we have that system. Obamacare is an improvement, but we still have the worst abuses taking place. Large organizations whether they be business or government involve waste, fraud, mistakes etc. One is not immune from it and the other is not the source of all perfidy. We were told in CA that we should privatize our power utilities that his would provide choice and lower costs to the consumer. Not a single persons bill went down and the only difference was that the local monopoly that had price caps just started to raise the price on everyone. They were still a monopoly like before, just a monopoly with no rigid price control. Within literally a few short years all of our utility bills doubled. Whenever privatization of government services takes place you can bet your bottom dollar the price shoots through the roof as the business needs to grow profits, providing the service they are charging for is secondary at best.

^Socal, that's interesting.

The free market has an excellent track record in many areas but I'm not free-market-for-everything in my outlook. I think there are certain things that a government can probably do better (national defence and law & order being good examples).

I do however think that size and scope of the State in the UK is way too high.

Good points from both of you HM, and Socal.

HM Murdoch wrote:The trend of free markets is that products and services improve over time. This is undeniable. Along the way though, there are inevitably mis-steps - poor business models, products that aren't up to standard. The free market weeds these out because they don't survive.

This is fine if I'm buying a television, a suit, or my groceries. If I buy something sub-standard, it doesn't really matter in the long term. I can buy a better product next time.

In health care, the fact of buying a weaker product could mean that there is not a next time!

Astute point, and the reality is actually even worse than that- because many times it's impossible for the patient to know if they're getting a good product! Maybe one scan you had recently was totally unnecessary, and the healthcare companies are pushing these scans on doctors as it helps their profit. Or maybe the other time you went to the hospital, the scan which the doctor didn't recommend was necessary, but the company is putting pressure to not have too many of those as they are more expensive and reduce profit for these firms. How as the patient or public are you meant to know ?? Even other doctors wouldn't know unless they read up your symptoms and history. Profit motive and healthcare raise many problems when put together.

HM Murdock wrote:^Socal, that's interesting.

The free market has an excellent track record in many areas but I'm not free-market-for-everything in my outlook. I think there are certain things that a government can probably do better (national defence and law & order being good examples).

I do however think that size and scope of the State in the UK is way too high.

That is a fair and logical position. You can take state spending and intervention too far and that becomes a huge problem as well. But lets remember every single first world country on the planet: US, Canada, france, Uk, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, etc. all; have a mixed economy with an activist welfare state. This didn't just happen in a vacuum, the beknighted free market crashed on a massive depression level scale every 20 years like clockwork till the entire middle class of the western world tapped out. That is why you find every single first world economy using a mixed economy with an activist welfare state, it came about out of the ashes and ruins rot by wild west capitalism.

Back to the women shrieking topic, yes it is highly off putting and irritating. It never happened in the past so I think it is a way of gaining attention for the player by saying "look at me how hard I am hitting and trying", and I think it is off putting to the opponent as well. It is another reason that the WTA product is not as marketable as it could be. Sorry for hijacking your thread Nore.

It Must Be Love wrote:

Bogbrush wrote:If you want a brilliant Health Service you have people buy the service from the likes of Sainsbury or M&S, who would be competing to offer new, better and cheaper services and have them in turn buy the services from people like me.

You're a bit naive if you think health service is going to work like M&S and Sainsbury's competing. Let me explain why:
My dad works as a doctor, and he mainly works with NHS but also does some stuff for private companies. So he has experience of inner workings of both.
The private health companies are not altruistic. This year they sent out letters to all doctors in the dept with a comparison of how many scans they were doing for insured patients. Again as patients are already paying insurance, scans cost money for the healthcare firms. My dad's colleague was giving out the most scans, so got removed from a certain list of advertised doctors for 2 years, which obviously would mean he has a substantial loss of income, and huge disincentive for him to send patients to scan in future, even if they are needed.
So that means doctors will find it difficult to act just in the best interest of patients.
I'll give you other examples, from India where there are many private hospitals. My dad's friend said how private hospitals have made doctors do unnecessary operations on patients who are nearly dead anyway, so they can then charge huge money. Many doctors were threatened with being fired if they didn't increase profits in these ways. And there's absolutely no way the families of patients will know what's happened.

The reason it's not like Tesco, is that you know more or less if a food is rotten, or if it's not tasty. Next time I'll go to Morrisons, no more Tesco for me. Frankly delusional if you think that's parallel with healthcare.
General public simply don't have the knowledge, which you need to make an informed judgement. We can make 'trip advisor' style websites, but that would be useless. Some patients will read up on Google or Yahoo answers and demand things that obviously are unnecessary, these people are likely to leave complaints irrelevant of the care. League tables between companies are practically impossible and very unreliable as there are so many factors such as pre-existing conditions, genetics, lifestyle.
So it's much better to have a healthcare system which prioritises care first, and not profits.

Think pragmatically BB.

I don't know any altruistic companies, I only know those who develop better services because they want to make more money.

Did you notice I mentioned a middle man provider in my model? I did that for a reason. The middle men (retailers) are the reason food is so incredibly good now. The manufacturers (like me) are wonderful, but truthfully the retailers were a huge driving force. They present themselves to the consumer as the guy they can count on to ensure the product is great: that's why they are desperate always to make sure everything on their shelves is brilliant, because they manufacture nothing themselves, their entire value to the consumer is that they can trust them to have stocked food from the best manufacturers, at the best cost.

If AmritHealth set up as a health retailer, and you as CEO wanted to establish your brand, you're only going to 'stock' treatments with brilliant providers, right? You'll audit the providers, negotiate great prices, delist uncompetitive / secondary providers and charge a margin for the service. You'll defend your reputation to the death because it's all you have.

As your name spreads wide and far you'll attract competitors so you'll have to insist on ever better standards from your suppliers. Scandals or stories of mistreatment would be poison to you, you'll make sure you have contracts that punish suppliers ferociously if they are guilty. Not hopeless 'investigations', hit them where it hurts. Guess what? They'll stop, or go bust so someone else does it better.

That's NOT insurance, which is rubbish because it carries all the hazards you describe.

I am ALWAYS pragmatic. It's the idealists who think people are out there doing stuff for the love of it (like the junior doctors who are striking to keep patients safe, but would agree if they were paid more for Saturday's ).

So we can all learn a little from Cuban healthcare system?

What has Nore done with this thread, a total health scandal

BB, but the Gov does exactly the same, negotiate prices, projects etc, and I know a few IT projects on NHS who got into billions and were completly written off, same with a few for DWP projects.

Private companies can be managed by a smart Gov, but everyone loves a little on the side, in the end its same thing, Gov sucks, businesses suck you dry.

Jahu wrote:BB, but the Gov does exactly the same, negotiate prices, projects etc, and I know a few IT projects on NHS who got into billions and were completly written off, same with a few for DWP projects.

Private companies can be managed by a smart Gov, but everyone loves a little on the side, in the end its same thing, Gov sucks, businesses suck you dry.

State procurement is a joke. Philip Green was called in to report

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61014/sirphilipgreenreview.pdf

spending other people's money is always done badly, it's like a rule of the Universe similar to the speed of light.

If I sold my stuff to the State I'd have so much money I'd be getting this post typed by my ipad assistant who would look like Gal Gadot and have great typing skills.

Businesses only suck you dry in monopolies. Competition is all. Ask yourself - do you feel 'sucked dry' by Sainsbury or Aldi? Or by the Government?

Well a bit of a tough comparison, you go to Aldi/Sains to be supplied, you dont go if you dont have money, then you go to Greggs and get a cornish pasty, so we have choice there.

Gov should get the best bang for our buck, but it rarily does, and we have no choice there, sure we call it Election Democracy, but that gives very little say on how our money is spent.

As far as people get a "decent" service, not many care, or just live with it.

We had health tourists earlier, now we have investment tourists, Tata steel pulled out, Gov is lost what do to, nationalise or what.

2 sides of same coin, mostly.

Jahu wrote:We had health tourists earlier, now we have investment tourists, Tata steel pulled out, Gov is lost what do to, nationalise or what.

2 sides of same coin, mostly.

Again, the problem is State. I wonder how much Tata were bungee to run this thing?

As Murdock explained, if they got their faces out of driving energy costs to the stratosphere to fund absurd green energy crap maybe it would be viable.

bogbrush wrote:
If AmritHealth set up as a health retailer, and you as CEO wanted to establish your brand, you're only going to 'stock' treatments with brilliant providers, right? You'll audit the providers, negotiate great prices, delist uncompetitive / secondary providers and charge a margin for the service. You'll defend your reputation to the death because it's all you have.
That's NOT insurance, which is rubbish because it carries all the hazards you describe.

Interesting you're against the insurance system, glad you agree on that.
But that doesn't mean you get a pass on all my concerns:

a) Public would not really know if they're getting a good service; companies can pressure cost saving measures which are not in the best interest of and can harm the patient, without patients having a clue. That's a fundamental problem. There's no real way to avoid it. Many patients complain when they've read something on yahoo answers or google, and demand medication when it's not necessary. On the other hand doctors can sometimes do everything right, but there's no way of saving the patient. Numerical league tables will always be unreliable, as they can't accurately standardise for all the factors such as genetics, patient history, lifestyle.

b) If we had a private healthcare system, I think it's quite likely doctors will be paid more than they are now. Now we have a system which basically bans doctors from going into just private healthcare right after they qualify. That allows NHS to as a monopoly employer to depress wages. So that would increase overall costs

c) What happens if someone is poor, and has a chronic disease which is expensive to treat, or has recurrence of cancer. Even if the cost is brought as low as possible, a chronic or recurrent disease will still have a significant cost. If that person is unemployed and doesn't have savings, surely we can't just leave them to die ?

Jahu wrote:Well a bit of a tough comparison, you go to Aldi/Sains to be supplied, you dont go if you dont have money, then you go to Greggs and get a cornish pasty, so we have choice there.

Gov should get the best bang for our buck, but it rarily does, and we have no choice there, sure we call it Election Democracy, but that gives very little say on how our money is spent.

As far as people get a "decent" service, not many care, or just live with it.

Great, you go to AmritHealth to get you good treatment at a good price. If he gets bad reviews in the papers you go to JahuTreatments.

Government has no chance of doing this because it's staffed by people whose livelihoods aren't at risk based on the quality of their performance. They don't have competition, they do t lose out by failing. Same as those money frauds in the banks who the State protected from the consequences of their fraudulent actions.

If I was a woman I would never visit a gynecologist at Jahuhealth services, just saying.

I'm not a fan of State ownership, but neither of favoured private monopolies, which in the end is just swapping money from incompetent State to Private pocket.

I am all pro business but with good clean state oversight, but we saw that with Banks, in the end we always pay either way, and does not guaranty a better service, neither did the privatised Rail.

socal1976 wrote:If I was a woman I would never visit a gynecologist at Jahuhealth services, just saying.

Would still be better than some places that do female genital mutilation, me is good doc.

Don't be scared.