Vorg care RSS feed care tag at the Vorg blog http://vorg.ca/tag/care All items Copyright 2001-2004 by their respective authors en-us What kind of public healthcare should smokers get? http://vorg.ca/2159-What-kind-of-public-healthcare-should-smokers-get? UK Daily Mail:
"There is increasing evidence that smokers have three times the number of complications as non-smokers. What we are proposing is that if someone who smokes is being referred for surgery, we would instead want them to be referred to a smoking cessation clinic and give them three months to stop smoking."

Dr Battersby added: "What we are doing is asking people to have a stab at giving up for three months and at the end we would review the situation. Some people will have stopped and will go on and have a referral for surgery. Others will not have stopped."

In those cases, decisions will be taken along the lines of clinical need.
I've always thought that public healthcare should have incentives built in to promote people keeping themselves healthy. Smoking is a pretty clear cut example of this. It doesn't much sense to spend a lot of public money treating people who are killing their bodies with cigarettes.]]> http://vorg.ca/2159-What-kind-of-public-healthcare-should-smokers-get? dustin health care smoking UK 2006-10-23T04:48:51-04:00 http://vorg.ca/2159-What-kind-of-public-healthcare-should-smokers-get?#replies