Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
I think that you are confusing health insurance with access to medical care, Jacek. For instance, it is written into U.S. Federal law that hospitals may not turn anyone away in an emergency, even those illegally in the country (of course, from a moral point of view, that is the right thing to do). Many people have access to health care, and are picked up on the public dole here in the U.S., and many in Britain have "universal free health care", but can't gain access to their doctor. British author James Dalingpole, an Oxford graduate who lives in Kent, has depicted the NHS and how Brits like him will do almost anything to avoid it. He depicts grungy waiting rooms staffed by women reading magazines while you wait 4 to 5 hours to see the doctor, and the "surly" service. He also mentions that 140,000 Alzheimers patients were denied a $ 4 a day Alzheimers medicine in the UK by "NICE" (Orwell would have loved that name, by the way), the group within the NHS that decides what patients get what drugs. The reason was that the $ 4 per day cost "society" too much.
One result of socialized medicine is that in Britain now, very few native Brits go into medicine. The typical MD in Britain is from Pakistan or India, i.e. from a medical school that is, shall we say, perhaps a bit less rigorous.
I know a doctor in Minnesota who has a thriving business of patients who fly in from London, to get their medical care. They must be delusional, because the NHS is so awesome, right ?
There is a difference between overall life expectancy and medical care. For instance, many young men in the U.S. die due to accident and violence, but that is factored into the stat you site on medical care, even though it is not related to it (if a young man shoots another dead on the street, is that really an indictment of how good the hospitals are ?).
[Edited by John Bunch on August 13, 2009 11:15 AM]
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch on August 13, 2009 5:13 PM
it is written into U.S. Federal law that hospitals may not turn anyone away in an emergency
Can British hospitals? Are those "grungy waiting rooms staffed by women reading magazines while you wait 4 to 5 hours to see the doctor" all emergency rooms in the UK?
The typical MD in Britain is from Pakistan or India, i.e. from a medical school that is, shall we say, perhaps a bit less rigorous.
More and more are from Poland, which is very rigorous, so there is hope...
I know a doctor in Minnesota who has a thriving business of patients who fly in from London, to get their medical care. They must be delusional, because the NHS is so awesome, right ?
No, dear John. They must be rich. I am not rich by their standards but as I told you I also belong to a fraction of Polish population who, barring hospital catastrophes, never uses public healthcare system in Poland and no one prevents me from doing so. What I am saying is that living in a free country I have a choice. Do your 40+ million?
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Hi Jacek, yes, they have a choice ! I recently met a 25-year old woman who chooses not to buy health insurance. Well, what do you think will happen if she gets cancer ? Do you really think that hospitals will not treat her, that her relatives will not help out, or a church or charity, or the government ? Because it is a fantasy to think that.
Meanwhile, health care in Britain is not as great as they say:
Is it worse to be uninsured, or to be on the 1+ year waiting list to get care, in the UK ? What good does it do me to have "free universal health care", if I have to wait 18 months ? If I am in pain, that will seem like an eternity !
------
"...Care may be free of charge at time of service, but that time of service might not come in the same year one might think it should. NHS guidelines currently allow inpatients to wait 18 months for hospital tests or treatment. The waiting list to be admitted to a hospital tops 1 million people, and over 40,000 of those have been on that waiting list for over one year.
NHS patients are expected to wait 26 weeks to see a specialist after they have been referred to that specialist by their general practitioner—whom they also had to wait to see. In January 2001, there were 180,000 people waiting to see consultants. Dr. Liam Fox, former opposition leader on health issues in Parliament, explained that this number essentially represents the number of people waiting to be added to the waiting list for care.
The waiting lists are not likely to get shorter any time soon. A recent poll to which two-thirds of UK doctors responded found that 80 percent of them would consider leaving the health field if the NHS remains as it is.
The official NHS Web site praises a particular hospital at which patients need only wait 18 weeks for treatment of back problems. That hospital had reduced its wait time from 89 weeks. The Web site also lauds hospitals that are beginning to allow patients to schedule appointments to see specialists according to what’s convenience for the patient, rather than according to the hospitals' arbitrary choice of appointment times.
Even in Sweden—that paradigm of socialist utopia—residents outside of Stockholm wait up to two years for hip surgery.
On the bright side, all of this waiting is free of charge ... even at the time of disservice.
Quality Can’t Compare
In the United States, over half of all patients receiving arthritis medication are receiving the newest and highest-quality pharmaceuticals. In Britain, only 15 percent of arthritis patients can claim that privilege.
Restricted access to high-quality pharmaceuticals is a problem that plagues not only Britain's single-payer medical plan, but health care in other countries as well. Like their British counterparts, only 15 percent of German arthritis patients get the latest medications. From 1995 to 1997, pharmacies in Portugal, Italy, and Greece failed to carry over half of the new medications surveyed. Pharmacies in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands lacked over one-third.
These statistics come from countries that have had years to perfect their socialized medicine programs. However, even the United States can be a source of statistics on socialized medicine. Medicare denies more claims for medical necessity than the private sector does.
What evidence is there that expanding Arizona’s state government health programs will lead to results any better than these? Universal health care has a long history, and that history teaches only one lesson: It will not work."
Logan Elia is a research assistant at the Phoenix, Arizona-based Goldwater Institute for Public Policy.
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Yet another report on the failures of the NHS (just google it, you will get many, many hits). And yet, despite the evidence, many continue on with their "faith-based" reverence for "free"(*) socialized medicine, despite all evidence:
* - As if it were really free (if it were, it would actually be a good deal). But it is not free, and people pay up to 18 % of their gross income for it, depending on the country.
BTW, one U.S. state has had universal health care since 1994, and that is Tennessee. If you want to read about the results of "TennCare" (which is very close to what Obama has proposed), you can read about it here:
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch on August 13, 2009 7:20 PM
Meanwhile, health care in Britain is not as great as they say: Is it worse to be uninsured, or to be on the 1+ year waiting list to get care, in the UK ? What good does it do me to have "free universal health care", if I have to wait 18 months ? If I am in pain, that will seem like an eternity !
John,
I simply don't believe that they got rid of private doctors in the UK. You mean that if you are on the 1+ year waiting list to get care, you have no choice of going to a private clinic? Gee, I never thought highly of kingdoms but to fall this low??? Can't they come to Poland to see how the two systems, public and private, peacefully co-exist? So under Obamacare all the private M.D. offices in the US are going to be closed thus preventing the booing GOP mobs from continuing their treatment with the current doctors???
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Those "mobs" are not GOP, they are mostly Democrats. It shows how far gone the Democratic party is, and how out of touch they are, sitting in their elitist enclaves in Santa Monica, Vermont, and Manhattan, that they call anyone who does not agree with them a "mob".
Up until very, very recently, boisterous, heated debate (remember the anti-war protests ?), agit-prop "street theater", and "question authority" used to be the mantra of the liberal Democrats. No more. It is now "sit down and shut up and listen to what 'Dear Leader' is going to tell you to do. Those "question authority" bumper stickers have been ripped off the volvos...
Originally written by John Bunch on August 13, 2009 5:13 PM
...There is a difference between overall life expectancy and medical care. For instance, many young men in the U.S. die due to accident and violence, but that is factored into the stat you site on medical care, ...
Yeah, especially with "Death Panels" deciding that we have had just about enough of youth gangs, drugs and violence, yes, and throw in everyone past 60 or anyone with a wrinkle or a little loose skin or something less than 20/20 vision or perfect hearing...the deaf, holey moley! But first, for heaven's sake, do let's get rid of all those non-white youth gangs. From there we can slowly amble up to the old with Alzheimers - they won't know what hit them anyway... The blind won't see it coming, while the deaf ...
False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots
The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks. …
But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists. ...
Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor). ...
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
There was a good article yesterday about an American woman in a British hospital, giving birth. She did say that the advantage of a "free"(*), universal health care system is that there is almost no paperwork when you are admitted. She got in right away. But, even though she was giving birth, the first thing that the "brisk" nurse asked her was "Did you bring your papers and towels ?". Evidently, the hospitals in the UK don't supply those, and - as in Africa, as the journalist mentioned - you are supposed to bring your own supplies (!). She gave birth, but it was then explained to her that many people were coming in, and there was no room. Instead of a 3 to 4 day convalescence (which would be the rule in the U.S.), she ended up staying a total of 6 hours in the English hospital, before having to leave.
A different journalist, Victor Davis Hansen, who has been treated in European hospitals for many years on his various trips, reports that in almost every case, the public hospitals were sort of grimy, and one salient feature in all "free" socialized systems is that they blame you for being sick. He wrote that this happened to him many times over the years, when they would literally shout at him for being there and for getting sick. I can just picture this in future in the U.S., should ObamaCare be put in place: "You smoked all your life, and now you have lung cancer !?" [implication: you are using 'societies' resources', and it is all your fault !".
I mean, what are you going to do, tell them to sod off and run to the competition ? There is no competition ...
(*) - As I have pointed out before, it is not "free", because the state taxes you up to 18 % of your gross income to pay for it.
[Edited by John Bunch on August 14, 2009 11:18 AM]
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Nanna, I think that people are missing the point. It is a tired, old rhetorical tactic on the Left to say that anything that they disagree with is just an opinion that was "bought by big industry", or by some think tank. The truth is that the town hall meetings are genuine and many Americans are very worried about "ObamaCare". It would be very easy - and incorrect - for liberals to say that this is not the "real" opinion of Americans, but unfortunately for them, it is.
As Michael Barrone has pointed out, only 22% of Americans are liberals. 34 % are conservatives, 32 % are Republicans, and 39 % are Democrats, and that number has not changed much since the 1960s. Barrone's point is that there are more conservatives in the U.S. than Republicans, and more Democrats than liberals.
And the problem with this legislation (ObamaCare), is that it was written by the liberals, not by the Democrats, the Independents, the Conservatives, or the Republicans, or a mix of all of them (which would have been best). A good plan would be for universal care, but with some things thrown in to make the GOP and the conservatives happy. But that did not happen. The bills (there are 5 of them) were all written by the liberals (Nancy Pelosi), etc, and that is why we see this level of protest. The 22 % of liberals are not even representative of the Democratic Party ! So the liberals are now complaining - from their elite enclaves in Santa Monica and Vermont and places like that, that the town halls in Maryland and Missouri and Illinois are not "the real America". And that is a real big Joke.
[Edited by John Bunch on August 14, 2009 11:27 AM]
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch on August 14, 2009 5:15 PM
She gave birth, but it was then explained to her that many people were coming in, and there was no room. Instead of a 3 to 4 day convalescence (which would be the rule in the U.S.), she ended up staying a total of 6 hours in the English hospital, before having to leave.
Send her over here next time! In big cities, when giving birth, she will have a choice between public hospitals and private clinics.
You are no longer used to the concept of choice in America?
Come on, I am positive that the US can do better than the grim British NHS! Have some confidence!
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