In defense of the UK National Health service

[Rum]

Mods:- forgive me for copying and pasting my own post here to start a new thread, but it is buried deep inside another one and I think it deserves a bit more attention. Delete it if you think not.
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My understanding is that our National health Service in the U.K. has been criticised in the USA and held up as inefficient and not fit for purpose in the debate that is going on right now.

I am here to tell you different. My father has had lung cancer and a stroke in the last eight years. My mother has had a stroke and lost the sight in one eye and also has osteoporosis. I had cancer of the penis three years ago and follow up complications requiring a further operation a year and a bit ago(now thankfully resolved).

My daughter was involved in a fatal car crash four years ago. She was in hospital for two months and has very serious injuries which have required after-care, therapy and physio ever since - as well as some psychiatric/emotional support. One of the other kids in the accident was on life support for three years until he died.

So my family has been in pretty serious need of medical support over the last decade to put it mildly.

ALL of it was provided. All of it efficiently and in a timely fashion. The nursing staff in particular were always superb, supportive, caring and professional. Appointments with my GP were always offered within a couple of days if not the next day and promises were always kept.

I paid for none of that except through taxes. The system is fucking superb. The bullshit you are hearing about it in the USA is politically motivated by people who believe that the ultimate principle in life is the right of the individual to be self contained and have no social dimension to their lives.

This is one extreme of what I personally believe to be a superb political system in the USA. It is a very impoverished perspective in my view.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

All I need to know about NHS I learned from watching Benny Hill.

[charlou]

The bullshit you are hearing about it in the USA is politically motivated by people who believe that the ultimate principle in life is the right of the individual to be self contained and have no social dimension to their lives.

Very true, and many are the same people who support meddling in the affairs of other countries ostensibly to impose social improvement.


Australia, too, has a publicly funded health system which ensures most people have access to adequate health care. Yet another reason I appreciate living here.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The NHS is an imperfect, overlarge, inefficient, overworked, expensive monolith. And it is quite the best imperfect, overlarge, inefficient, overworked, expensive monolith out there. When you consider the scale of its remit, to provide free healthcare, as required, from cradle to grave, for an entire nation, at a reasonable price, it is incredible that it succeeds as well as it does. If there is one thing to be proud of in the UK, it is the NHS.

[Animavore]

Meh. Not as good as the HSE

[maiforpeace]

Rumertron, you don't have to defend your National Health service to me. Those Americans that are criticizing your service either have health insurance already, or have never had to deal with the services we barely provide for the indigent. When those people get a health emergency, remind them that the real death panels are the insurance companies, and they better pay attention to what's going on otherwise they will get a big "REJECT" for that life saving surgery they need.

I haven't been able to find any articles on this yet. (and I have really looked, so I wonder if the propaganda machine is working overtime on this one) I did see this reported on an episode of Bill Maher. Apparently, we now are opening mobile health units, similar to ones like "Medicins Sans Frontieres" that serve third world countries at sports arenas here in the US, where hundreds of Americans line up for days to get basic health care. This particular newscast interviewed a mother and her 14 year old, who had to be kept from school to line up so she could get glasses FOR school, in addition to a man who had been suffering from chronic headaches because he couldn't afford to have a simple tooth ailment treated.

All I have to do is compare the health care my two cousins and their families receive in France to mine and it's enough to make me sick and want to go to the doctor.

Oops. Let me see if I have an extra couple of hundred dollars for a doctor's visit, my deductible is pretty high.

What's even worse is that there has been a 54% drop in medical students here in the US entering Family Practice. Because of our "for profit" system, everybody wants to become Dr. McDreamy from Gray's Anatomy and make their fortune on procedural medicine, which pays by the procedure instead of a salary. The Baby Boomers have no clue what they will be up against, ten years from now, when they will be in lines ten times longer than the ones NHS patients must wait in, all the while still having to pay insurance premiums or go bankrupt should they require care beyond the scope of their coverage. I am also horrified to know that many of these people don't have long term care insurance.

As you can tell this is a hot button issue for me. FUCK THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! YAY FOR THE NHS!

(you may now deport me to the UK or France for my traitorious statements about the US)

[Rum]

Rumertron, you don't have to defend your National Health service to me. -snipped- :

Hi Mai, I guess I am preaching to the converted here (pun intended!). There is a logic to a social health system which the sensible American members here will no doubt appreciate! You have tro be pretty nuts to see it as the thin end of the wedge letting communism in!