THE LAST DITCH

Britain has fewer high-tech medical machines than Estonia and Turkey – Telegraph.
This will not surprise anyone who has lived in an emerging market. The interesting question is "why?" In a spirit of scientific enquiry let me offer a theory for you all to shoot down;

The profitability to the vendor of a a good or service varies directly with the number of bureaucrats involved in its purchase, multiplied by their average annual remuneration but divided by the square of the number of decision makers with a financial interest in the outcome. Where "bureaucrat" is defined as a paid, office-bound employee with no financial interest in the outcome of the purchase.

Please note that it is not specific to the public sector (although the number of decision-makers with a financial interest in the outcome is likely to be lower there). Let's call it "Paine's Theory of Purchasing."

Any thoughts?

2 responses to “The cost of high-tech medicine”

  1. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    This got highlighted to me via Facebook and being quite bored this afternoon, I thought I’d try testing the limits of this theory. The first implication is that countries with a higher real wage are more profitable. If one assumed a financial interest in the outcome to equate to accountability, then private sector companies are potentially less profitable than the public sector due to the poor accountability in the latter. Finally, increasing the number of bureacrats also increases profitability. I think the theory falls down on the fact that the higher real wage, in combination with a high level of bureacracy, should make the UK more profitable. Therefore, an additional multiplier relating to real public spending is required, but I can’t quite work out how…

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  2. sams Avatar
    sams

    Interesting Mr Pain

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Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.

Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.

He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

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