To be really shocked by the Panorama show Poor America

[MrsHeffley]

I just can't believe that Americans don't care how their poor get literally no healthcare or help at all ie no job no food,home,benefits or healthcare what so ever.

I love America and we have American family but dp and I were appalled and totally shocked.

All those families living in drains and tent cities,schools sending kids home with food and worst of all zero healthcare and all those hundreds of desperate people queuing up in cars on the off chance of free medical care,the girl whose mum ate rats.....

The complete utter lack of hope.I just don't get how such a rich country can justify in all these years not voting in free healthcare for the poor at the very least.

I thought they got food stamps and the like?

I started a thread about this in Telly Addicts. I felt just the same.

That poor child Lesley was just heartbreaking.

Someone made the point that for years Americans have been brainwashed by the conservatives into believing that any kind of assistance for the vulnerable and poor is socialism, and socialism in the USA is seen as something akin to Stalinism or Trotskyism and takes all their freedoms away.

It's a very very divided (polarised) country now, too. Plenty of people are as shocked as you, the despicable Tea Party plenty of people see the poor as feckless.

Plenty of people are conned by the pro-business Brigade into thinking that Big Government is the Biggest Evil.

They believe in the American dream - any one can better themselves, on their own, capitalism will solve their problems...so no support, nothing....welcome to the free world!

Yy to call someone a socialist is a massie insult-Obama met hue resistance when trying to address the medical provision for those not covered. It's so sad...we also have poverty here, but thank goodness we have the nhs :)

Did you hear the figures,can't give the exact quote but dp nearly fell of his chair?What was it how 95% of the US's wealth is owned by 5% or something ,maybe somebody can rem the exact quote.

I don't get how people sleep at night or don't care enough to do something to vote in something. They're all so vulnerable(anybody can loose their job) not just the poor.

I wish everyone that whinges about the NHS and waiting lists were watching it!

The guy who was dicing with death, with a potentially fatal condition (prolapse/hernia that was looking like becoming septic) who decided not to seek treatment because it would have cost him $20k...that was shocking. I doubt he will survive.

I would have liked more information and detail about healthcare, particularly emergency healthcare, and also about the government's policies. It was a bit vague and needed to remember it was serving a British audience.

If Lansley gets his way, we won't have the NHS for much longer..

Sadly, the UK is heading this way and most of us are sleep-walking into it.

I don't understand how someone who had been in full time work and had presumably paid his taxes whilst doing so was entitled to NOTHING when he lost that job, lost everything and ended up living with his family in one room in a motel. I thought that had some kind of welfare, or do you have to pay extra insurance for that?

The pictures they showed of Detroit looking like Beirut was just shocking.

I know re the NHS I'm scared and confused as to how nobody is jumping up and down about it.Do the changes mean we'll end up with the US system?

Rosebud-you are right, we need to fight for our NHS...the cuts have barely started, let alone dear Lansley and his bill :(

America is quite "third world" in some parts.

During Hurricane Catrina, when it wiped out New Orleans, it was commented on widely at the time that the majority of inhabitants were black, dirt poor, poorly educated and thats why it took several days for any help to get to them - they were, quite simply, expendable

It was horrific to see that poor man. $20,000 would be impossible for him to find. It made me realise how very precious our health service is. God help us if we follow the same route as America.

Agreed rosebud I am a nurse in the nhs and yesterday had a meeting with a manager. She spoke mainly about money, how we make it and how we need to be earning more by carrying out various tasks. What struck me by the end of the meeting was that she had not once mentioned patients or quality of care. It's a sad state of affairs indeed and I agree it's heading only one way :( I was shocked and horrified too by the programme, terrible just terrible.

I found it utterly shocking too. I had thought that there were charity hospitals that catered for those that didnt have jobs and health insurance, it just never occurred to me that there would be people that literally had nowhere to turn in in a country like America.

The NHS and welfare 'reforms' are leading us this way....give it 10-15 years. we'll be the same.

Is it really that hard to beleive?

I mean, do search on here for threads about benefits, and see how many people seem to think that poor =lazy.

Our government is currently trying to stealth privatise the NHS (hence the doctors and nurses unions up in arms about this)., and is intent on dismantling the welfare state that brought is as a nation into universally better health and quality of life.

What we have is so much better here (I lived in the US during boom time and was shocked back then at how many people I worked with and met who had no health insurance).
Americans often beleive the hype they are fed regarding the impossibility of socialised medicine and welfare benefits, and so vote for the very people who are screwing them.

Do something to save the NHS

I think (although I could be wrong so correct me if I am)-the top execs get top notch everything covered insurance with their job then I think those lower down get lesser insurance with excess to pay for eg GP visits,all prescriptions even kids. This is re jobs that include insurance for those that don't they'll have to stump up for £1000s just to cover a family then imagine if you all got flu you'd be in serious shite having to stump up for GP visits etc.

Then of course you get the people who can't afford insurance at all.

Make no mistake, the current government are ideologically opposed to any welfare or socialised medicine.
They will push as far as they think we will let them to dismantle everything we have that keeps us all healthy, equal, housed and fed.
Don't let them do it.

However much we all argue how much benefits people should get I think the maj of British people want the poor to get free health care and benefits.Surely nobody wants our poor to have nothing like those in the US.

Here you get help to find work,help with education too,there ois a chink of light if you want to grasp it-it just seemed on that show people were totally and utterly alone,there was a complete lack of hope akin to those living in slums in India,Indonesia etc.It was the lack of hope and complete isolation I just found chilling.

Makes one appreciate what we have in UK especially NHS. Indeed Britain is GREAT atleast we look after our less fortunate. Although the CON-DEM would gladly turn GB into what we saw on panaroma.

Isn't this one of the things which Thatcher was trying to do and had to draw back from?

I don't understand how Cameron, with his experiences with his son Ivan, could go anywhere near this kind of policy.

(This is one reason why we have to fight to keep Scotland in the Union, or we will be condemned to an eternity of Tory governments because of our ludicrous voting system. Sorry Scotland if that seems insulting, but it's true.)