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 was going to watch it but I already knew what it would say . My cousins little girl has leukemia (although just about out the other side now) and they have to rely on her husbands healthcare benefits that come with his job. Without that they would have been up shit creek. I can't comprehend how a country could allow sick children to suffer because their parents weren't stinking rich or had job related health insurance.

I've been to the states a couple of times and have been aware that it's not all hunky-dory for everyone, there's a lot of people at the bottom and no safety net.

The Tories are trying to chip away at the NHS and welfare system until we end up like the USA.

I have honestly never seen anything so heart breaking from a "wealthy" nation. That is truly shocking

I've got right wing family in the US, I can't discuss things like this with them without getting angry.
They have told me we've been brainwashed by socialist telly into believing it's right to give handouts to 'lazy' people. They also don't like my mum as she gives money to 'lazy' people for a living (incapacity b.).

It scares me but we never discuss politics anymore to keep the peace.

Meglet, :( How can a so-called civilised country treat people like that? I've got right-wing family in the US, same as Intrum, and they genuinely think that free healthcare is a socialist evil.

The thing that surprised me most was the run down public buildings. It was like a ghost town. Repossessed houses are being demolished and the people going to live all over so the community is completely lost.

In Lionel Schrivers 'so much for that' 2 families have an adult working in a job they hate to keep health insurance for a family member with a long term illness. They are just trapped because to change employer is to change insurance and they would never get sick people insured on a new policy.

I am living in an area very affected by the economy ...its one reason we have lost our home.

I haven't seen the show, but my neighbors live it (IYSWIM) it is a disgrace!

feeling my in-laws are also terrified of socialized health care...my MIL has just spent 6 months being misdiagnosed by her doctor. Wonder if she will change her mind now?

worra asked about food stamps?

Some folk will qualify, but its not much ....plus unemployment can/does run out.

There is no easy way to apply for housing benefit, and it does not really work that way here anyway.

One really can lose everything here.

In the US you get a kidney transplant paid for on Medicaid
but NOT get the anti rejection drugs needed for the rest of your life
which means my sister will die before I do.

in the US the government underwrites mortgages and allows a deduction from tax bills for all mortgage interest
and has humungous per capita military spending and prisons spending
but does not make sure that people do not die of treatable diseases

We visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and thought the homeless situation was much, much worse than it had been on our previous visits. DH relatives were wealthy enough to buy themselves into a retirement complex with a hospital and end of life care included, not many are so lucky.

We were truly shocked at what we saw out walking (nobody WALKS which is one reason why few people see the homeless), right next to the most expensive areas, shopping streets, families sleeping on the ground, little kids too, in absolute squalor. Our DS's were crying and could not believe that this was happening - and so widespread, in the country which calls it's self the land of the free, and styles it's self the worlds only super power.

Our American relatives (who lived in the UK for some years), are regarded as dangerously left wing as they want health service reform in the USA -it is regarded by many as un-American to even suggest their system is broken.

Oh my God :(
I knew it was bad for the poor in America but I didn't know it was quite that bad.

Eating rats?!

20 million people living on £7000 a year for a family of 4?!?

Really puts all our whinging about the NHS and the benefits cap into perspective doesn't it! We are so lucky and we don't appreciate it at all.

That's the other danger I think. That people lap all the cuts and "reforms" up because "At least I don't live in the USA".

"The republican idiot that said it was totally untrue that families where going without food needs a good slap." There was a thread on here a week or so back about capitalism/communism where MNers were more or les saying the same thing.

@Conspire: read any of Thomas Frank's books about American politics & modern history, they are very eye-opening about the systematic right wing agenda to destroy the quality of all public services.

Feisty row at Xmas visit 2 years ago when my relatives were lining up on different sides on the then (very hot) health care debate. They dragged me into it (Arrggh) but all I could say is that Obama's national health plan looked very little like the NHS I know.

There are good things there: you get tax breaks for all your dependents (children are disabled adults you care for). It's a much more generous tax break than in the UK. Obviously, you need to be able to work in the first place.

I have lived in the UK for 10 years (and am also now a citizen) and have often expressed my ire at the state of America, my former home. I haven't been back to visit in almost 7 years. I knew things were bad and getting worse but I did not expect the things I saw in this program.

I have seen poverty like this before. In India. In Sri Lanka. In Thailand. But NOT in one of the 7 richest countries in the world. 1.5 million children homeless should not be an ideological issue. That's more than the population of Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester combined.

I am utterly shocked and appalled at the state of the US. I am livid and frothing that the Republicans and their mouthpieces deny there is even a problem! For the first time in my life I am truly ashamed to be American. When my passport expires I will not be renewing it.

Capitalism has gone wrong, it is so far to the right that it is broken. In the same way that Socialism in USSR went to far to the left and became broken and all went wrong.

The rich in both societies get richer and the poor get poorer.

Far better to have something more central with higher taxes but higher rewards, scandanavian countries seem to fair better with a willingness to pay higher taxes but to have a better welfare sate when things do go wrong. Considering somewhere like Sweden have far better welfare payments it doesn't increase there % which are unemployed - but rather decreases the numbers.

I am partially dependant on the welfare state. I have paid into the system since I was 17, and when I am wholly independant again I will continue paying into it.
I am extremely grateful for the benefits I do get, and grateful to live in a country where this is possible.
We may have it better here at the moment, but things are sliding FAST, and when we lose the things which prevent our country from suffering apalling inequalities, we will not be getting them back.
It is not just about unemployment either.

60% of people in this country who rent their home get housing benefit (and a proprtion of the other 40 % will be ineligible students)
The vast majority of all benefits claimants are working people, albeit on very low wages.

We have been put into a situation whereby housing costs have been allowed to skyrocket, wages have been kept very low, and inflation is soaring.
This makes the majority of families in the UK very dependant on the state, and therefore gives the state tremondous power over us.

I am against benefit cuts because I can see that first, there needs to be a massive change in the way work, affordable childcare, and affordable housing is managed.

The housing issue in particular is shocking: 10 years ago I could have bought a small house, on my own, on the salary I was earning.
Today, the same job pays a mere 5 k more than it did then, and yet the same house would be 3 times the price.
Ordinary families have been priced out of having stable homes, and now the energy companies are pricing us out of being able to heat the rented places we live in.
At the same time, tenants have essentially no rights, and there is no way of getting social housing anymore.
Profit has been put before people systematically for 30 years, and we are beginning to realise what this means.

I am going to copy and paste your post to my MP, NorthernWreck.

I was thinking the other day, and could trace so many of British society's ills on the ludicrous price of housing

Aw shucks
Feel free to correct my spelling Ariel!

Trickle down economics ROCKS (for those who are doing the trickling down).

Don't you know that you can choose your parents/health/luck/whatever? Failing that, the Lord has chosen this path for you so suck it up and give him thanks for the lesson he has brought to you.

Anyone else feel like they are living through an End Times, in a Roman Empire type way rather than mad people Rapture-like.

Someone asked earlier - yes, you can get food stamps if you are homeless, but the amount varies. And its not very much, and you cannot use it on non-food items like shampoo, soap etc.

If you do not have health insurance here in the US, you can get Medicare, which is govt subsidized healthcare. But many doctors do not accept payment via Medicare. Only certain public hospitals do. if you are indigent, some hospitals will not see you, even in an emergency they will drive you to the public hospital, even farther away. Even with health insurance, some doctors do not accept any type of insurance, you have to pay the fees completely. And when you change your job, you usually change your health insurance company, therefore changing your doctor (unless your dr subscribes to several plans).

If you work here, no matter if you have a low wage, you do not get "benefits" of any kind like in the UK. No housing benefit definitely. You have to be very poor to qualify for reduced charges for gas/electric.

We are in Virginia. We have insurance that costs $550 a month for a family of 5. It covers 70% of each treatment, minus co-pay of $100.

It screws us over all the time. We have an income below the poverty level (student grant) and kids do get free school meals including breakfast. That is all the aid we are entitled too.

My husband had a stroke a year ago. One week in intensive care. $1000 a night just for board. The insurance covered 70% so we only had about $5000 bills. Last week my daughter was so ill I took her to the doctors (we only go for emergencies as it is $100) and they sent us to the children's hospital emergency room for suspected meningitis. God knows what that will have cost us... but when DS needed ten stitches last year it was $1k after insurance.

So you can still be bankrupt with insurance. It sucks.

it isn't only the poor impacted here if the nhs is destroyed- pretty much all of us will be!

I believe medical bills are the chief cause of personal bankruptcy in the US.

AND yet they spend far more as a % of GDP on healthcare. Far more expensive system for far worse outcomes - some of the worst stats in the developed world. God help us all when the Tories are finished disembowelling the NHS...

flying is there no medicaid for below the poverty level in your state?

Or sometimes you can just get coverage for the children through it?

Indiana has that. :)

Obama care?

Edam, yes thats true.

Many of our neighbors have had to do it.