No longer-care

[caddyman]

I have been following the debate over healthcare American style vs healthcare UK style with detached interest. Initially I thought it would grab my attention, particularly when I read the rather bizarre editorial in the Investors’ Business Daily that suggested that Professor Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have stood a chance if he’d had to live in the UK and be treated by the NHS. This editorial has now been amended , but it still reads as a rather alien argument to European eyes.

A lot of emotional energy has been expended by American conservatives in attacking ‘socialised medicine’¹ and British supporters defending the NHS and the surprising thing is how little information there is in the argument. It is all contention; neither system is anything like as bad as its opponents imagine and neither are they as wonderful as their proponents would paint them.

Trying to make sense of it all has left me bewildered; I can’t find an account I can understand, much less a source I trust on the pros and cons of either system that isn’t soaked in dogma and rhetoric. I conclude from this that people would simply rather argue than face up to the realities that it all needs reforming in each country and that, unpalatably, someone somewhere is going to have to pay for and administer it. The only clear contention is that no-one seems to think they can afford what they think their citizens are entitled to.

Today’s Times has an interesting opinion piece. It’s the finances of the situation that scares everyone, apparently.

There was an excellent cartoon in yesterday’s Times that pretty much summed it up. I have just managed to find it by devious means...

Comments

[willowing.livejournal.com]

i know what you mean, it becomes really tiresome when people just take on polarised black/white positions instead of talking about what's really important! (nvc is needed!) :-) x

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

NHS - Pay medium taxes, but where treatments are rationed on a benefits basis, and top-up is largely not allowed. Private healthcare is largely discretionary, and paid largely by employers to expedite treatment, or by the rich for better facilities/rationed treatments.

France - Pay high taxes for a high level of feelgood, but some element is paid by the patient and (I believe) much top-up is encouraged. I think Private health care is fairly seamless...?

US: All healthcare is inherently private, and is either paid for directly, by employers or by the rich. A "safety net" deals with the deserving poor (mostly the elderly). Emergency intervention is available, but after that, you better have insurance. Care has little pressure to constrain costs. Litigation is enormous, and "Health Plan" second only to salary in terms of employee concerns. Cost of plans is mostly direct to employer and is not hidden as a tax.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

What I am hearing over here is that people don't want the government to have more control over their lives, which is what they are afraid it'll amount to (apparently, the Founding Fathers set the US govt up as one which would serve the populace rather than have control over their lives).

But I think that what they really object to is a socialist govt that we are not allowed to criticise.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

A socialist government they're not allowed to criticise?

Devil's advocate here: look at the history of the civil rights movement; look at McCarthyism in the 1950s; look at Watergate. Look at the restrictions that came in after 9/11. Who needs a socialist government when a 'free government' can do all that?

And as I say, most Americans wouldn't know socialism is it politely introduced itself. Even the American left is much further to the right than its European equivalents.

That said, small government is by and large, what I agree with (even as a civil servant). I just get fed up with people trashing our institutions and praising their own, when frankly, they are all in dire need of reform. As I said above, the NHS is nowhere near as bad as the US Right portrays it, and the US system is nowhere near as bad as it is portrayed over here. Nonetheless, medical bankruptcy is the prime factor in US bankruptcy cases. Over here it isn't.

Just finding the facts to make an informed opinion is almost impossible in the face of the name-calling.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

What made me baulk was this guy on the BBC (he was at one of these protest things in the US) who was insulting not only the NHS but the entire British public to the British reporters face and thught that was an acceptable way to make his point. I bet if the reporter had given back a fraction of what he'd got he'd have been surrounded by yelling Americans - Semmingly criticismis good for one and not the other.

Just to finish: No NHS = No me, I'd almost certainly be dead without it so I intened to take all this NHS bashing quite personally.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree with that! I owe my life to the NHS. doctors and nurses put up with so much critisism from people who also wouldn't be here without the NHS. It seems to be the "British" thing to do, complain about a thing and knock it to the ground for small things when there is so much to praise. Mind you, the NHS could do with losing a layer or two of management

I can't comment on the USA system because I have never experienced it