has anyone covered the NHS republican slander free healthcare for americans thing today?

[Tortington]

i cant find an existing thread is there one.

i been listenng to radio on the train - talk shows need to comment

is there ?

There certainly should be. Whilst our NHS is far from perfect it does a fantastic job. Whatever else our taxes are used for, I think most of us would want the NHS to be top of the queue.
What is not being reported in the USA is that we too have private insurance so we have a choice. Pay for fast treatment or have it free on the NHS. In my experience there is little difference in the waiting time.

Outrageous bunch of lies being thrown about by thick-headed nasty twats. Claiming Ted Kennedy would be killed by the NHS for being too expensive to treat!

I thought it was hysterical! Stating that Stephen Hawkings would have been rejected by the NHS! Erm....

Quite pathetic.

And what they aren't mentioning is that their existing system of healthcare is ludicrously expensive and appalling. So many avoidable deaths and morbidity - because either you ain't insured, or if you are insured, your insurance company will only cover drug X, not drug Y, or because it's in your doctor's interest to carry out as many tests and procedures s/he can think of, repeating them if they can get away with it.

People think they are getting good treatment because their doctors are doing stuff - failing to realise the stuff is a. possibly harmful b. wasteful and c. for the doctor's or hospital's financial benefit.

You can tot up how many people die needlessly in the states as a function of their health system. Comes to a very alarming figure. And a darn sight scarier than this country.

Is this because President Obama is trying to overhaul the system re health care??

I do a lot of work in the US, and its in the healthcare system. I hear about cancer care from both ends of the spectrum - from the supermega total overkill (more they treat, the more the docs get paid) treatment centres to the centre in a remote rural area where the staff went out to collect patients after hours to smuggle them in so that they could get basic treatment without the administrators noticing.

The NHS isn't perfect - I've worked in it, and am still involved, but at least no one asks how you will be paying when you are admitted.

Top reason in the US for becoming bankrupt ? Accident or serious illness

Absolutely CMOT. I have a friend who will owe money for life after birth complications.

I'd never move back there with the U.S. health care system in its current state.

My dad had what we thought was a heart attack while he was visiting here, and he was astounded by the fact that their first priority at A&E was to TREAT him rather than make him fill out paperwork about his insurance. And because costs here aren't overinflated by insurance companies, his two day stay in Bristol Royal Infirmary didn't cost him the ridiculous amount a similar stay in a U.S hospital would.

I think there's an MNer who had to declare bankruptcy in the face of medical bills in the States...

I could weep over this - I heard a radio interview with an American woman the other day, quite obviously white 'middle class', who stated that she didn't want universal healthcare as she didn't want the US becoming communist.

I personally know of:

A couple who don't have medical insurance themselves but scrape enough money together to cover their daughter.

A man whose mother had a heart attack, was in hospital for 10 days and was discharged with a bottle of out of date aspirin. He had to remortgage his home to cover the US$40,000 medical bills.

My mother-in-law, visiting the US, was taken very seriously ill. She had medical insurance, so was admitted to hospital but after she got home was told that the insurance didn't cover the problem. Too bloody late as far as I'm concerned, but they're still hounding her 5 years later for repayment of the $28,000 fee for her hospital stay.

God bless the NHS.

thats the idea that i get too - that the republicans are pedlins this as a socialist ideal - ergo anti american by mention of the word socialist.

can anyone tell me how this is likley to play out with the american system

its not like obama can just introduce it - is the sugestion i got from the radio today.

millions on adverts telling the people to lobby their representatives to vote against a universal system

so a vote in the house of representatives then

so what does that mean in reality

and will the big health care companies bribe them with millions of pounds ?

ant-american is the card played when ever the conservatives don't want something. Don't like the war - you're anti-american, like obama - you're anti-american, want to get rid of the death penalty - you're anti-american.

Rumours already of health care insurance companies bribing people to violently demonstrate and many seantors will be in their pockets.

Who knows how it will go, many people said it was impossible for Obama to get in and there was huge and sometimes violent resistance in parts. So I keep my hope.

I used to look at an American hyperemesis support group and there were always a lot of threads about whether certain drugs were covered by a particular insurance policy and how you could persuade your insurer to pay for the drugs you needed.

Heard an American woman on the Jeremy Vine programme yesterday who pointed out that the problem is that when words like 'social care' or 'socialist' are used, many Americans immediately think 'COMMUNIST' and so that's why so many ordinary people in the USA are against a publicly funded healthcare system. She said it just showed how over the years people have been so brainwashed and so mis-educated. her answer was that people in the USA need to be educated so that they don't immediately think of Russia and Communism

There are many things that bother me about the idea of an insurance-only system but one of the first problems I always think of with the American system is you can end up destitute without being able to treatment for some conditions which we would just think were not really a big deal in the UK, like diabetes - surely it's far better (and cheaper) for society to pay for insulin via the NHS and allow people to carry on working (and thereby taxpaying) as normal than it would be for diabetics to go untreated and suffer all the potential complications like blindness and losing limbs etc. and whole families living in poverty as a result?

What I can't fathom is how anyone can live with the knowledge that must be people who can't get access to any sort of health care because they have no insurance. What are those poor sods supposed to do?

I am dithering about whether to go to get my foot looked at as I damaged it recently. But I am dithering because I am afraid of having a plaster on my foot for ages like last summer. Not because I can't afford to pay.

Have any of you seen Michael Moore's film 'Sickened'. It's incredibly moving about the people who miss out on healthcare in Americs- includes a black mother who's baby dies due to something incredibly minor due to lack of suitable insurance (I mention that she's black as black people are proportionally more likely to havethis kind of horrific experience). I wish it could be compulsory viewing in America...

sorry it's called 'sicko'

There seems to be an attitude among many that you get what you work for

The healthcare companies are lobbying, trying to get their staff to lobby etc etc. I am shamed by this.

My colleague has struggled to work through multiple bouts of cancer, and is now down to the minimum number of hours per week, working from home, no questions asked, as if she can't keep working she'll lose her insurance (fortunatly the department find enough things that she can do as and when to justify to the management). Her husbands insurance won't take her as she has cancer, so she is forced to work on, effectively till she dies.