Talk:Concerns about health situation in UK and Austria

Should Focus Exclusively on UK Gap

Criticism of non-monetary remunerations to physicians is not a "related move" and should not be mentioned in this article. I'll remove the final sentence if no objections arise fairly soon. In a related move, the external link to Der Standard does not connect to a specific article. Actually, inferior medical care for poorer people is by no means unique to Austria and the UK and is not in itself anything "new". It is worthy of being considered in an OpEd piece or a general review, but that is not what Wikinews is all about. The point of the articles in The Guardian and BBC News is that a recent study showed unexpected widening of the healthcare gap in the UK and the planned response of the NIH. Perhaps we should cut Austria out of this Wikinews piece entirely and present more detail about the UK situation. Mpulier 09:19, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

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here are some responses to the issues raised:

• non-monetary renumeration and connection to health issue: this is all about the fact that doctor get some drugs for free but charge them to the social insurance, thus putting further pressure on the health system. The practice of pharmaceutical companies to issue some pills for free are also undermining the quality of the health system as it may influence the doctor's decisions which drugs to buy (namely those where free pills are included). It also undermines the patient's trust that he will get the right pills. At least that is the argumentation of the Austrian patient ombudsman, as quoted in "der standard":[ http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2139068]

• the external link to der standard connects to a bunch of articles, all on the topic (reactions by different parties etc.). Articles in "der standard" are usually sorted into channels, each of which gets its own page.

• The relevation that patients are not getting the best treatment because of lack of money is very much news in Austria, I can assure you (though perhaps an old hat in the UK).

• The added value of the article is that it combines news reporting about the beleaguered health systems in Austria and The UK, which is absent in the national reporting on the problem in the two countries.

--Danielsp 16:25, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Non-monetary remuneration of physicians certainly puts an indirect strain on the healthcare economic structure in several countries and is worth going into, but not here in this article. It's neither a "new" topic in the sense of "news" nor is it unique to the UK and Austria. For example, it is a major problem in the US and is a subject of increasing controversy. The statement of the Austrian ombudsman may be news in Austria and may warrant an article in Wikinews, but it is too far removed from the news of the healthcare "gap" described in the UK to be attached to this article.

As I see it, the thrust of the news in the UK is that officials were surprised by the deterioration in healthcare recently reported there and are responding by deploying a cadre of relatively untrained health advisors into selected regions. Of interest is whether these advisors will be capable of altering health related behavior among their clientele, whether they will receive necessary support, whether their achievements will be adequately studied (e.g., in terms of cost-effectiveness), and whether the strategy of sending them out truly addresses the responsible underlying defects in the National Health system.

As for non-monetary remuneration of physicians by pharmaceutical firms eager to influence doctors to precribe their products over those of a competitor, while such practice may contribute to the gap between the level of care for the poor versus that for the general population... certainly the contribution is much smaller than is the impact of other causes. Thus the relevance of the remuneration issue is comparatively too small to deserve exclusive mention here. The "added value" is not worth the negative value produced by distraction from the main topic.

If Australia is mentioned as a country with a healthcare gap, we should list other countries where this is reported. A recent report in the US noted that in a region where adequate facilities seem to exist, certain population groups fail to take advantage; and it was suggested that education would be the key to narrowing the gap. This is congruent with the UK plan. That kind of information is what should be included in the current article.

As for the link to Der Standard, it may be helpful to indicate in the anchor that the clicking will elicit a set of related articles; otherwise a reader may arrive there and not know which way to turn. I know that there are headlines and such, but most people are not very assertive about such things and are easily discouraged from proceding when they encounter any confusion or obstacle online. Mpulier 17:31, 14 August 2005 (UTC)