The farm foreman has told us he will make appropriate arrangements for the continued pruning of the olive trees while he is in hospital. Naturally we were concerned for him but he hastened to reassure us.
"I'm having my knees done. My name's come up."
"What needs doing?", we winced.
"I'm over sixty."
During the 1950s, when healthcare first became available widely, people would present one another with operations, as gifts. Having your appendix out was a popular and acceptable present. As state provision rather than insurance provision advanced, the practice faded, to be replaced by a consumer view of, particularly, hospital treatment.
If your name is put down, at the appropriate age, for an operation, when it comes up in you go. The number of heart bypass procedures, shunts, hips, and knees closely matches the population in the appropriate age bracket.
Who is to say it isn't more efficient to do a steady flow of non-emergency surgery before a part conks out, rather than have people in pain, or under threat of death, in a queue to get a bed?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment