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Health Care: America versus the UK
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Well both health care systems are lousy. In america you cant get health insurance if you have a preexisting condition, you binge drink, or have to many tickets. In the Uk anyone can get health insurance for free, the thing is you might have to wait a few months or a few years to get an operation or a doctors visit.
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Not that it's an "only" as they're both quite significant, but still...
low income and jobless people are covered under medicaid, it is people who earn too much to qualify for medicaid but either earn too little for health insurance or risk not taking it out that are without health care.
not that i think the system is better than the nhs
The UK system is far superior, even with the waiting list. You don't have to re-mortgage your house to have a heart bypass in the UK....
Also the maternity care we received with my son was superb, couldn't be better
Absolutely right.
The idea that you should have to pay for your healthcare and that the lives of your citizens should be an industry for profit is fundamentally wrong.
Not nearly as wrong as the idea that personal responsibility, freedom and the independence of citizens should be junked for dependency upon the government, mind. The idea that instead of you being able to do as you wish with your money, the state should take it from you, and do what it wants with it, because nanny knows best.
The NHS is a giant black hole, more always goes into it than comes out. Sir Derek Wanless' recent report on it says just that. He basically says about £40 billion has been thrown into it with no improvement in productivity. Though he does give a 'guarded tick' for waiting times.
If American healthcare is nationalised all you'll get are increased taxes, waiting lists, deteriorating facilities, less research and all round general lower quality health for most people with forever increasing sums being thrown at it to try to stem the problem.
Churchill pretty much sums it up: 'The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.'
(source - The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford, p123-124)
Well why don't you do us all a favour and move there, see how you'll like it then.
The system in the US is a sham. It's insurance companies procedure to reject any insurance claim that comes in, regardless of whether it's legit. Anybody interested in this should watch Michael Moore's new movie 'Sicko' cause it's all about the health insurance system in the US.
Or just ask anybody what its really like. You can have the greatest insurance and still have such horror stories. I always thought the problems everybody talks about were nothing too much till I had insurance of my own. Everybody has them. The insurance companies are a business (as are all the health care facilities) Theres the stories you'll hear from Sicko, and then the every day ones that are just as bad. An entire surgery being covered, no problem, but the necessary $500+ backbrace you have to wear for 6 months after not, or on a smaller leverl, foot surgery being covered and the $50 pair of surgery boots not. Anestesia not being covered, a young girl at work had a potentionally cancerous mass found and the several thousand dollar MRI wasn't covered. And after so long of fighting different things, or evenf ighting the same thing, it's stress, its time, its money, alot of the times people just give up and pay it, whether they were supposed to or not.
The price of even necessary medication. Most cost over $100 for a months supply, some twice that. Birth control for $60, and that is rarely covered even under insurance. Some insurance's dont' cover prescrpitions. I once had a "generous" prescription card when my insurance didn't cover, it took $10 off each prescription, all of which were still over 100 after that generous gift.
There are so many terrible things that everybody hears about. The cost of insurance (over 100 a month for me, I believe my parents was around 800 for a family) the difficulties of getting insurance if your job doesn't offer, the even higher cost of it if you do it alone, the cost of everything medical related, profit profit profit. The insurance companies, the pharmacies, the drug companies, the professionals, the facilities the list goes on.
And be you lucky enough to have a job that has insurance, good insurance even, you're still going to fall through all the loopholes and the cracks that they can find. It really doesn't matter how well off you are in that respect, the horror stories continue on and on.
But, having said that there is absolutely no way they could have a NHS like us it would just be far too big, a state by state one is the only way forward.
As for the NHS itself and its general productivity, frankly the biggest problem with it is us, we are fat, drunk and violent - if we actually behaved in a slightly decent way we could spend a lot less on the NHS and get a better service.
Depends on what you need to whether or not you can get it for free.
the americans spend more per person on health than we do in this country, despite the fact the fact millions of people there have no access to decent treatment for severe medical conditions which would suggest the american insurance system is far more of a drain in profit compared to our system where bureaucracy is the hindrance(as well as the NHS doctors you wait 6months to see, you see in a few days privately in their 'time off' and probably in the same hospital too)
and if the NHS actually laid out some priorities for whom it treats with what, NICE is pretty good at it normally for drugs - things like IVF should be private only imo and mroe should be spent on mental health services
Did you hear me? I said in america I spend most of my money to live, not very well, however, I was a millionaire now im broke cause i had a $336,00 operation and my medical equipment cost the rest of what i had.
There's no need to be so harsh about it.
I think you'll find that if you did come over to the UK< you'd still have to pay for the medical equipment you need.
:yes:
Either that of we'd bill the US embassy...
The NHS has problems, mainly due to chronic lack of underfunding over decades. It's easy to compare it to France & Germany without recognition of the fact that neither country have years of Tory underfunding to cope with.
Wanless is also talking out of his arse, either that or is misquoted. I am not sure which/ What actually constitutes "productivity" in the NHS anyway?
Finally, the US system. Is great for the NHS to learn from in the sense of medical techniques and how to change a culture (something which US healthcare did very successfully in the 80s) from one of gross inefficient medical practice. However, we have nothing to learn from them in the sense of funding.
saying "just so you can get your health care for free" like its some petty thing, when it already has almost bankrupted him and he still has to keep paying.
Its so easy to take what we have here for granted