To think the most shocking thing about James VDB's death is...

[Hitthebestbooth]

...that a famous actor, recognised worldwide for his role in Dawson's Creek (putting this in the first lines for the benefit of MNetters who love to comment 'who??' on these threads) struggled to pay for his cancer treatment? His death has left his family 'out of funds'.

Now, James Van der Beek had enough fame and affection from fans that a Go Fund Me has raised a lot to support his family already. But there must be countless families across America who are ruined by medical bills - if Dawson couldn't pay for his cancer treatment, how do non-famous people in ordinary jobs cope? What do their families do after they've been crippled by the costs and still lose their loved one along with their homes and security for their children?

As a millennial, I was so sad to read of James' death. I loved Dawson's Creek. But it makes me very afraid for a future where Farage gets his hands on the NHS and we find ourselves in this position too. I have plenty of bad experiences with our healthcare system and am not saying it's perfect. But if I or my husband are diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, we won't have to sell our possessions or ask friends and family for money or risk leaving our kids with no home after treatment costs. There are plenty of wealthy people out there eager to take the NHS apart and sell it off, and for all people say we'd get a European system and it would be improved, it seems far more likely that capitalist greed will win out and we'll actually get an American model.

James Van der Beek's death highlights just how ruinous that model is. He spent his illness selling off memorabilia and trying to raise money. He died knowing his family's finances were left decimated. And he was someone with more resources than most. It's a sobering indictment of how bad things can get, and I am truly afraid that a Reform government would put us all in that dystopian scenario.

There are all kinds of options I could put for a poll but I'm just trying to make it really simple.

YABU - US healthcare is fine
YANBU - US healthcare is a terrifying prospect

Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA. I would advise that anyone who wants to vote for Reform should first get quotes from private health care companies and declare ALL of their current conditions, they should also consider if their children, grandchildren would be able to afford it even if they can.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insurance-medical-bankruptcy-debt

If I was in charge, I’d make life insurance compulsory for anyone with kids under 18. No one wants to consider the worst happening, but better safe than sorry. Our kids are grown up now, but during their childhood the school community’s we were part of for 17yrs or so lost two mums at primary school, and two dads and two mums during secondary school. Not huge schools either.

The NHS can’t carry on as it is, but wouldn't welcome an American system.

Poor Mrs VDB - I hope she’s got lots of family support.

The American system is terrible and not fit for purpose. We need a European system because that would allow some honesty and realism into our dialogue about health. The NHS is an unmanageable behemoth and because it is a national treasure, neither the NHS nor politicians will be honest about its limitations. They have to pretend to the public that it can do everything for everyone or risk not getting re-elected. In a European system it’s possible to manage expectations without everything becoming a political fight.

I'm not being difficult, I'm genuinely curious to know what the legal basis is for making a spouse responsible for their other half's debt.

It never ceases to astonish me how people can claim to value their NATIONAL health service while simultaneously believing a nation should be importing so many dependents.

To have a good welfare system you need high levels of social trust, you need a cohesive population who want to pay tax and feel their money is well spent. This is completely at odds with the migration we are currently seeing in the UK. It won't be Farage that kills it.

Of course healthcare in the US is expensive and yes, the model is seriously flawed. But you are BU to suggest that 'non-famous' people = financial ruin. It's really disingenous.

It’s not disingenuous AT ALL. ‘Non-famous’ people not only face financial ruin due to the American health system, they frequently die from things like asthma and diabetes because they can’t afford inhalers and insulin.
In a country that boasts unimaginable wealth and tells the rest of the world we should emulate them, people die because they can’t afford things we take for granted will always be available to us as part of the NHS model.

Everyone who bleats about the NHS needing to be replaced ala Farage seem to think they will be alright because and it’s only the feckless who will suffer.

My medical care has cost the NHS well over a million quid over the last 20 years. I was diagnosed at the beginning of my working life when I was paid pennies and wouldn’t have been able to afford insurance or out of pocket costs.
I would have died within months.

I have an ex colleague who, after Covid, was left with total digestive failure and needs to be fed via IV. One bag of her ‘food’ costs hundreds of pounds. She can’t work due to her condition so without the NHS she wouldn’t be financially ruined, she’d be dead.

It’s very easy for that wizened Toad to bleat about ‘reforming’ the NHS because he’ll get massive pay offs from the insurance companies and has amassed considerable wealth and pensions from his various deals including a generous MEP salary despite never doing a tap of work the whole time he was at the table and could have addressed all the issues he claimed Brexit would solve.

The gobshites who are already on the bones of their arses calling for the man of the people to come lead them need to realise they will be the first to feel the sharp end of good ol Nige’s plans to see them as collateral damage for him selling the NHS off to his pals.

Farage has been given his opportunities by the political failures of other parties, that I can agree with, along with vast interference from Russia. But he absolutely will be the one to kill the NHS if he gets into power and we'll all suffer more as a result.

The NHS debate would be better if the Tories and Reform would just be honest and say they want to scrap it and replace it with a half and half model, or whatever. We all know that’s what the Tories would actually prefer.

But they don’t have the balls to put it in front of the electorate. So instead we have this eternal disingenuous battle where little bits get privatised occasionally and Labour points fingers for Tory underfunding when they’re in power, and Tories point fingers for Labour bureaucratic waste etc.

Worked in California with a woman whose mum and dad lived with her. Her mum got cancer, it bankrupted them. Don't know the details but they lost their home and they had insurance. This was about 20 years ago before Ombamacare.

YABU for not knowing about this, and here’s why: if you don’t know how bad a private for-profit insurance based model missing all European regulations is going in the US (rich, famous people losing every dollar to medical care, normal people dying on A&E floors because they’ve been forced by cost to neglect their medical care for so long), you won’t be an informed voter here in the UK. Two-thirds of bankruptcies in the US cite medical bills; the rates here would be as high or higher without the NHS, so vote accordingly.
www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/john-august-healthcare/healthcare-insights-how-medical-debt-crushing-100-million-americans

After reading [[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2n644l44o www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2n644l44o I’m not massively optimistic about the long term sustainability or indeed integrity of the NHS.

I keep an eye on https://kffhealthnews.org just to remember that Australia isn’t perfect but it’s pretty good sometimes.

My friend lives in the US.

A few years back, full health coverage for her and DH (both 40s) and young son, with no existing conditions, was $1,200 a month.

And although it was top level, she'd still have to co-pay for routine appointments and prescriptions, so these would still cost around $100 a go.

Her cover was paid for by her employer. But it's easy to see how most people would struggle (or just end up in shit paying jobs for the health cover). It's a brutal system.

I expect people to get these things when they have a job. Benefits aren’t there to give any form of standard of living. They’re for just scraping by. The basis of a decent standard of living should be that you get a job and an income, protect that income with insurance and don’t have to live off benefits.

I don’t buy health insurance. My employer provides it for me as part of a benefits package. This isn’t unusual. The only time I haven’t had health insurance was when I briefly worked for the public sector. I want a system where employee health insurance is mandatory so all workers have their health protected and are hopefully more likely to be able to have lengthy healthy working lives. I also think employers should have minimum targets of disabled employee recruitment.

I had bog standard (albeit very thorough) NHS cancer treatment 15 years ago. I had a friend, M, going through the same thing in the US who didn't get anywhere near as thorough treatment. A mutual friend expressed concern that M's treatment didn't see as 'belt and braces' as mine was and wondered if it was due to the level of insurance M had.

M died 2 years later. Whereas, touch wood, I am still here and well. Getting checked anytime I have a niggle that might relate to something dodgy starting up again.

Truly terrible that M's children are now without their mum, due to crap US, money driven healthcare.

What happens in the US if you can't continue to work due to the medical condition you have, that ended your employment? I assume the cover doesn't continue once your company has ended your contract? All very well saying 'have health insurance through employment'. What if you don't have employment due to ill health?

It's crazy but the electorate at large has voted against their own interests regularly, including on better health care coverage.

Van der Beek had six children and unstable work. Sadly, I'm not that surprised.

I agree we will get a US version of the NHS. The European model sounds good but I can’t see us going down that path.

With our NHS data being given to Palantir (horrible dangerous company that will have access to our data and will end up charging us to access our own data) I just think this is the beginning of the end.

The medical situation is insane over there imo.

I saw in an article it referred to keeping the children at their (presumably private) school as well. My friend is in Florida paying 50k for her (1) DC's school so multiply that by 6 that's 300k per year that his widow will be trying to pay.

In what way are Russia interfering?

Instead of pinning this on an irresponsible opportunist like Farage, why aren't we expecting more from the supposedly responsible figures who we elected to govern us? They're on a national Kamikaze suicide mission, Farage is just a bottom feeder lying in wait. People claiming to hate him are hell bent on creating the conditions that benefit him

Your choices are a false dichotomy, OP.

I agree that traditional America health care is a nightmare. The ruin of the NHS and the Russia connections are my two biggest fears about Reform, all the more so because few are paying attention to them.

Like some PP, I prefer certain European models of health care. FWIW, I lived in America for about 15 years and always got health care through Health Maintenance Organisations centred around outstanding university medical centres. Costs were incredibly reasonable; there was some limitation in choice of providers. Both HMOs were run as mini versions of what a properly funded NHS could be (we had small copays).

The care was excellent. Preventative care, almost all free, was of a much higher standard than the NHS offers.

He chose to have an unstable career, six children and lived in a rented home, a great deal of actors are uninsured, he hadn’t workrd a great deal in a very long time. He was also MAGA, so literally voted for his financial situation to happen.

Theres been a new hit TV series recently and one of the main actors (a new break through actor) was asked about the best thing about the shows success, he said the fact that he now has health insurance.

Meanwhile I’m just wondering who the hell chooses to have SIX children!

Or people in pretty ordinary jobs with mortgages and children who need food and clothing……..

That is easier said than done though - some people can’t afford it. Due to my severe asthma, mine and DH’s is £80 per month. That is a lot of money

It's really hard to reduce the topic down to a binary choice, and what I was interested in was whether people feel the US health system is reasonable or not - given that we are on the road towards it if Reform continue to gain traction. It does seem from the thread that no one wants the US system, and that's what I wanted to ask.