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Comment by patentatt | Hacker News Reader

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In UK, where NHS is publicly owned, it was actually policy to have 90% occupancy of ICU beds. If it was less than that, the "extra" beds would be removed.

From a public health standpoint it makes more sense to have two hospitals with 100 beds at 90% capacity than one hospital with 300 beds at 60% capacity. It's leads to better patient outcomes to have the hospital staff work overtime compared to rapidly hiring and training new staff whilst the hospital is being overrun.

Why ? What’s the rationale ? How they arrived at 90 percent figure ?

Do you have a source for that quite extraordinary claim?

Not the parent, and not a backup for the specific claim, but I know that Tory governments since Thatcher have been taking the strategy of misapplying business efficiency tactics to NHS, then when they don't make sense and cause worse outcomes claim that it's because government was involved at all and call for privatization.

No, the government restricts facility size. Look up “Certificate of Need laws” if you’d like more information.

Those exist because the hospitals are privately owned. An area doesn't want hospital companies getting into a pricing war and then both going under leaving the area without hospital service at all.

There'd be no reason for it with a public health care system.

The government tries to keep medical care expensive to avoid competition that might result in some instability so the cure is … government running health care.

Robustness isn't incompatible with capitalism, it's incompatible with any system where the government is willing to swoop in and bail out companies that fail. Companies that plan around failures/shortages/disruptions lose the ability to profit from their planning, while those that didn't plan ahead get showered with free money or cheap loans.

I don’t understand why this is getting downvoted considering this is almost verbatim what Taleb preaches.

he forgot the trigger warning: this post does not blame capitalism for all modern ills.

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