Monday, June 25, 2007

Crisis report from a very credible source

I looked up an important official today, of whom most of us may not have heard. His job is to review on government spending and report to Parliament. His name is Sir John Bourn and his title is the Comptroller and Auditor General, at the National Audit Office.

Now imagine that this person was so worried about the unravelling of the country's finances that he began touring the country, warning the general public and trying to get the issue onto the agenda for the General Election. I think you'd start to worry, too.

This is exactly what's been happening in the USA, as commented on by Michael Panzner in his website. David M Walker, the Comptroller General, has been playing Cassandra for months. To see the 60 Minutes video about this man, click here.

Could someone tell me the situation here in the UK? We don't seem to have such frank and authoritative public discussion as in the US.

UPDATE

In the CBS video, David Walker notes not only the expense of US medical care, but how many people are uninsured, and the rate of medical error. If you'll also read some of my comments in the globalization thread on Cafe Hayek, you'll see I'm of the view that we should start taking better care of ourselves, rather than trust to Dr Kilpatient.

2 comments:

Sackerson said...

I'm not sure that the above comment relates directly to my post; perhaps it is an example of spamming into blogs. At any rate, I hope people don't mind if I now add the coding feature that screens out automatically-generated comments.

Sackerson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.