English losing faith in their Hillarycare

[HarrySchell]

Patients losing faith in the NHS, claims survey
By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 2:25am GMT 05/11/2007



Growing concern among the public about falling standards in the NHS is revealed in a new health survey.

Despite the huge amounts invested in the health service by the Government in recent years, fears over its future continue to grow among patients.

The survey's findings show high levels of concern across the entire health service.

advertisementNearly half of those questioned by the Patients Association said they wanted to see further cuts in waiting times for treatment, an urgent reduction in infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) and an increase in the number of doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff.

Leading Patient Association trustee Ann Alexander, a solicitor who specialises in health cases, said: "We have to make sure that the health service has adequate numbers of healthcare professionals capable of providing treatment within a reasonable amount of time in a safe environment.

"We don't want people put off by the fear of catching serious infections in hospital to the extent they feel they have to go abroad for treatment."

The survey comes as new figures reveal that last year about 70,000 Britons spent more than £315 million paying for treatment in overseas hospitals and clinics to escape long NHS waiting lists and high rates of infection.

The amount is expected to grow substantially over the coming years. The numbers of patients seeking treatment abroad is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade, as revealed last week by The Sunday Telegraph.

That could mean as much as £886 million being spent by Britons on foreign treatment.

Keith Pollard, of the information website Treatment Abroad, who carried out the study, said: "Despite huge investment in the NHS over the past 17 years, patients from the UK are voting with their feet and travelling abroad."

A fifth of those questioned by the Patients Association identified a reduction in waiting times as their main priority.

Fifteen per cent said cuts in hospital infections would make the greatest difference to them and 14 per cent wanted to see more staff on duty.

The findings follow the publication of official figures which show the Government is failing to meet its target for reducing the spread of hospital infections.

Cases of C. diff increased by seven per cent in hospital patients over the age of 65. Cases of MRSA fell by 10 per cent from a high of 7,096, but this was not enough to meet the Government's pledge to halve the rate by next year.

However, despite grave concerns over the NHS, the Patients Association survey found a clear majority rejects any move towards creating an insurance-based health care system on US or French lines.

More than 40 per cent support the current method of funding the NHS through national taxation. Twenty four per cent of those who took part, however, back a tax deductible insurance policy as a way of paying for treatment.

The survey, shows an overwhelming majority want an end to Britain's healthcare "postcode lottery" where availability of drugs and treatments depends on location.

Our findings on the growing number of health tourists provoked an angry response from the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson.

In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph he states: "Most of the treatment carried out overseas is either minor cosmetic surgery or dentistry. Little of the treatment is for general elective surgery, and where it is the majority of people accessing it would probably have gone private in the UK anyway."

The Patients Association is still collecting responses to its survey at www.patientsassociation.org.uk.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../04/nhs104.xml

 

[Jkwas]

I have a friend that lives here but is also a UK citizen. He has a place in England. His wife has cancer. They have had treatment in England and in the US. I asked about the level of care afforded by the two systems and how they compared. He told me that the Public system in England was equivelant to our private system in terms of treatment, but the private system in England was much better than ours. I don't have any facts of figures to back this up, just an observation by someone who is currently using both systems. He usually shoots pretty straight, so I don't think there was much bias in his opinion.
FWIW

 

[HarrySchell]

A good point, and maybe one can draw conclusions or not.

I think care, here or there, reflects the people involved. Good docs, nurses, etc. operate (figuratively) in both the UK and US. And there are horror stories in both systems. There is luck, there is how the patient inspires people to care for them, there are other factors.

What bothers me most about socialist systems is the overall lack of motivation of those who serve it. The profit motive is the strongest incentive system out there for excellence. Free markets can mean mobility for people to reject charlatans and go find people who do a good job, if the consumer is motivated to fend for themselves and demand quality.

Note that consumers who are not motivated to fend for themselves, do the work necessary to find good service, will accept lousy service, though sometimes they will complain in the hope that someone else will do the work they refuse to do, and make their situation better without any effort on their part. Such people are the most useful of idiots for socialists. They form the benighted and abused class which the socialist tyrant acts in the name of, and confirms the socialist's self-approval rating as a higher, smarter and more moral being.

That such people are lazy, unmotivated to any effort to take care of themselves and immune to the idea that their conduct is selfish and a drag on those that are taxed to pay for their care goes unnoticed.

I exclude from this group those who have some legitimate reason for their inability to deal with the world successfully.

Obviously there are a lot of generalisations above.

The basic truth is that socialist systems do not tend to reward individual performance. Since that is what medical care, and many other things, depend upon, average performance falls. Average quality of life falls. The economics turn to poo, and the rest follows.

Don't take my word for it, read the history, particularly of the USSR and Mao's China. Zimbabwe, and much of Africa...Estonia, before and after market reforms...

 

[defjon]

I was born in Scotland and retain duel citizenship, and let me tell you, the system there FUNDAMENTALLY is better. The motivation you are wondering about is often pure human decency. Doctors and nurses want to help people feel better, hence the reason they even bother getting into the field and spending all of those millions of hours in study. So many people here are killed by a system made to make HMO's sickeningly wealthy. If they aren't killed, they may be maimed. Or they may simply be financially broken forever. A lifetime of hard work can go down the tubes if you get a few serious blows to your health. Car wreck? Tumor? Some kind of cancer?? Sorry, you're done. Your insurance company is there to make money, not spend it getting you well.

Sorry folks, but the system in the US is just flawed. Medically speaking, that is. Need further proof?? Infant mortality rates, life expectancy...go look them up. Compare them to other countries in the western world. What is it that people say about dying slowly in America?? I'm sorry, but until you've experienced it and seen it destroy families you simply do not know. It isn't about socialism or lofty political ideals. FREE MEDICAL FOR EVERY CITIZEN, this includes prescriptions! It should be a right. A right to LIFE...remember, LIFE, liberty, pursuit of happiness. You can't have any of that if you're bankrupt a hundred times over and still dying from cancers or illnesses your HMO says was pre-existing because once in 1982 you went to the doctor for a headache.

This is my biggest beef with America right now.

 

[Jkwas]

It's hard to argue with any of the above. Regardless of your political beliefs, government should provide basic services such as public safety, healthcare, and national security, or else why bother to have a government at all? Just to build the roads?

 

[JuanCarlos]

It's hard to argue with any of the above. Regardless of your political beliefs, government should provide basic services such as public safety, healthcare, and national security, or else why bother to have a government at all? Just to build the roads?

Actually, a lot of people feel just that way. Though they generally include national security as well.

 

[Marko Kloos]

Good grief. Where to start with you, defjon?

I was born in Scotland and retain duel citizenship, and let me tell you, the system there FUNDAMENTALLY is better.

Well, I spent the first 24 years of my life with "free" socialized medicine, and I can tell you that I much prefer the American system, flawed as it is. How many years have you worked for a paycheck in the UK? How much per paycheck was taken out for the "free" social medicine? How much VAT did you have to pay on goods, and how high were your income tax withholding rates?

Or were you merely a non-paying beneficiary...in which case you would naturally deem the NHS "fundamentally better"?

The motivation you are wondering about is often pure human decency. Doctors and nurses want to help people feel better, hence the reason they even bother getting into the field and spending all of those millions of hours in study.

Doctors are in the field primarily to make a good living. If a doctor has to provide care for the same kind of annual salary that a high school graduate or someone with a Bachelors can make, then why would anyone go through six years of medical school, a year or two of low-paid residency with 18-hour work days, and all the while amassing hundreds of thousands in student loans?

So many people here are killed by a system made to make HMO's sickeningly wealthy. If they aren't killed, they may be maimed. Or they may simply be financially broken forever. A lifetime of hard work can go down the tubes if you get a few serious blows to your health. Car wreck? Tumor? Some kind of cancer?? Sorry, you're done. Your insurance company is there to make money, not spend it getting you well.

Ah, yes...the old "people are dying!" argument. Well, I have news for you--people are dying in socialized medicine, too. For every person in our system who has died because they couldn't afford life-saving treatment, I can find you a person in a NHS system somewhere who died because there was a three-year waiting list on their "free" bypass or heart transplant. In fact, my friend Mark (Bog on TFL) can tell you about a mate's mom and fifteen other folks who died recently in a local NHS hospital because of preventable infections due to bad hygiene procedures.

In a free market system, you can vote with your feet and go to the competition. If Baptist kills a few folks around here because their nurses don't know how to push a mop, I can go to St. Mary's or Park West. In a NHS system, you're out of luck as to choice.

Why are you lamenting the fact that insurance companies are there to make money? Your insurance company is indeed there to make money--what a shocker. When did that ever become a dirty word? How many people a year have to declare bankruptcy in the US because of medical issues, and how many of them were actually insured? Got any numbers? Got *any* evidence beyond "Sicko" and your feelings on the matter?

It isn't about socialism or lofty political ideals. FREE MEDICAL FOR EVERY CITIZEN, this includes prescriptions! It should be a right. A right to LIFE...remember, LIFE, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

"Free medical" is not free. Someone has to pay the tab, and that someone is always the taxpayer. "Free" means that everyone gets to pay for everyone else's healthcare, and the government gets to pocket thirty cents for every health care dollar spent to facilitate the transaction. Have you checked lately how that's working out in Europe? Apparently, waiting times at the NHS dentists in Britain are so long now for even minor stuff like getting an aching tooth looked at that many Britons are now resorting to home dentistry. In *every* country with a national health system, the story is the same: doctor shortage, rationed health care, long waiting times, and government bureaucrats who get to make the decisions on whose ailments get treated first. (Ask yourself why Canadians with urgent health issues come across the border to pay for private health care treatment in the US, despite their "superior free system" in Canada.)

When my grandma collapsed in her kitchen a few years back, she was taken to the hospital. Because she had regained consciousness when they found her, and because her condition wasn't deemed to be immediately life-threatening, she had to wait two days to even be examined at the hospital, because she got in on a Friday night, and the doctors aren't seeing patients on the weekends unless the condition is deemed life-threatening. Rationed "free" health care, don't you know. Gotta keep the costs down.

My brother works for one of the German public health care insurers. His job is to visit delinquent patients and put confiscation stickers on their valuable goods for defaulting on either health insurance premiums, or owing the national system too much money for treatments because they were deemed to "take advantage of the system". When the government runs that system, they'll send out people who can garnish your paycheck, take your flat-panel TV, and even make you turn out your pocket if you owe money. I've not seen an American HMO that has the same undisputed right to collect from patients.

Then there's the issue of the "right" to health care. You cannot--cannot--have a right to something that automatically creates a material obligation for someone else. If you have the right to free treatments at the doctor's office, then the doctor has the obligation to work on you (and maintain his office) free of charge, which means that he's a slave to you. If you claim the right to a service or a good, then you also claim the right to take that service or good from someone else free of charge.

Finally, if the government pays for your health care (albeit with everyone else's money), then the government gains the right to tell you what you can or cannot do with your body. If they pick up the tab, then they can tell you to not smoke, not eat fatty foods, and exercise at least twice a week, and there's nothing you can do about it. Why would you want that?

Your plea for "free health care" is most definitely a lofty and very socialist ideal. You claim the right to go to the doctor and then stick your neighbor with the bill, all the while appealing to the benevolence of the doctor instead of to his self-interest. What's not socialist about that?

 

[mountainclmbr]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=270338135202343#

A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work
By DAVID GRATZER | Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 4:30 PM PT

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.

My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.

Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli faces the media in Montreal in June 2005, after he got Canada's Supreme Court to strike down a Quebec law banning private insurance for services covered under Medicare — a decision the rocked the country's universal health care system.
I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment.

These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.

Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.

 

[Another User Name]

Ditto Marko Kloos.
Great post.

Canada is having severe issues with its system and from what I've read about other European systems, they suffer the same fate.

I'm quite happy not forking over 50% of my paycheck so that I can give free healthcare to free loaders.

How many muslims and other immigrants are just sucking down resources from the British taxpayer while they contribute nothing to society except make demands on the govt?

Our system maybe flawed in the US but at least it isn't disfunctional like many socialized countries. That would utterly piss me off, that I would have to pay the govt 50% of my check and still not get healthcare in a timely manner. I don't know how they put up with it. That sort of taxation creates 2 classes. Extremely wealthy and mid poor class.

 

[SIGSHR]

My only experience with government run and controlled health care has been in the military. I make the following observations:
1. The standard of care will be low due to the absence of the traditional doctor patient relationship, in the military's case caused by the frequent turnover of medical personnel due to retirements, reassignments, discharges-"rotational turbulence" in military jargon.
2. 10% of the people will get 90% of the benefits. The people in the military
who go on sick call the most are the smokers, drinkers, drug users, perople with dependents, people with STDs, people trying to get out of PT, etc.
I spoke to some ex-Canadian (now US citizens) friend about Canada's health
system. They told me in the five years before they moved to the US they used it three times, once for a minor work related accident to meet legal
requirements, ywice for physicals for ther kids for athletic activities. They
thought the 10% rule applied, they also told me that their modest experience
with the US system was it was much much faster to adopt the newest techniques, treatments and technology.
More recently IIRC the Supreme Court of Quebec struck down the ban on
private health care clinics in that province, they noted the long delays that
patients encountered in obtaining bureaucratic approval for treatment even for serious and life threatening conditions, they said that access to a waiting
list is not the same as acees to health care.

 

[Shane Tuttle]

Marko,

You hit it right on in my viewpoint.

Defjon,

With that, I disagree with what you think my taxes should go to (along with much, much higher taxes to provide the care to begin with in the future).

Apparently, waiting times at the NHS dentists in Britain are so long now for even minor stuff like getting an aching tooth looked at that many Britons are now resorting to home dentistry.

Yep. Nothing like having to pull 14 of your own teeth because you can't even get in to see a dentist. If that's the case, I sure would like to see what it takes to see a general practitioner...

The private industry is quite fixable. It would be a long road, but fixable. NOTHING THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROVIDES IS SET UP AS A BETTER SYSTEM THAN THE PRIVATE INDUSTRY AS FAR AS THE MEDICAL FIELD IS CONCERNED.

 

[Crosshair]

I agree that the system in the US is broken. However the primary problem in the US is the government itself. Poorly written rules and regulations hurt citizens. Rules like not being able to buy insurance out of state. This automatically limits the choices a person has for buying insurance. How insurance companies can drop a patient if they get some expensive disease, like cancer, leaving them with no coverage at all. How shady loopholes are allowed into policies, and other grievances.

I don't have all the answers, however I do know that rewriting the regulation book will go a long way to improving things.

 

[defjon]

While I understand that taxes would be higher, to me it is a better idea as health care costs are simply outrageous. A serious surgery or condition is going to cost hundreds of times more than any other major life expense. While doctors in in the national system don't make AS much as American doctors, they still do quite well. They make on average about 200,000 pounds a year. Also, consider college there is paid for as well.

You aren't paying for anyone else's medical bills. The person next door who you loathe to make well with your tax money also has to buy goods and services in economy, hence, he is fronting his own bills. I, personally, have ZERO problem paying only SLIGHTLY higher taxes there. Dude, have you SEEN how much they take out of our checks now?! The IRS is raping us! And unlike others, we get NOTHING but a retarded war (read: police action) for it!

You can scream socialist all you like. On this single issue I feel it is a matter of morality. A society can be judged by how well they treat the lowest of the low. I want to be a good samaritan. I would pay a few percentages more in taxes to let those low income, double-minimum wage working health insurance-less lower class that keeps growing every year in this country be treated for any and every condition.

Long running chemo and a 8 month hospital stay? Impossible for the insurance less.

Look, I understand the HMO's need to make money. But they make it on the blood of their customers. Look how much their profits have increased in the last few years in relation to their denials for procedures! The figures are out there. And that example I gave about being denied treatment (after first approving it) for a headache (unrelated to later illness) was a real one.

I'm graduating with a bachelor's degree in a year, and I'll be 40 k in debt. I can guarentee you that I would KILL to make what a doctor in England makes! I'll be lucky to clear 25 k.

"Doctors are in the field primarily to make a good living" --- you say, but I completely disagree. That may be the motivation for some, and partly for all, but if money is all they care about, why don't they just get into business or wall street? Medical school is NOT the easiest field. You will NOT get through it without a true love and passion for it. If all you love is benjamens, have fun cutting up and gutting real human corpses in Gross Anatomy 101.

"The old people are dying!" Well, sure they are. They're dying in America decades before they're dying in England, France, Canada...etc etc etc. We're what, number THIRTY SEVEN in life expectancy? Worse in infant mortality?! So the old people are dying. The uninsured are dying. The babies are dying. But hell. I want to keep a fraction more of my check. Screw my neighbor. Screw my fellow man. This is the land of the free, and freedom lives in my bank account, right?

I keep hearing all this talk about how terrible it is in Britain and all of these other countries, how long they have to wait, how terrible and unclean the surgeries are- THEN WHY DO THEY OUTLIVE US? Why do they smoke more, eat worse, excercise less, and live longer? Why do 1 out of 4 of our babies die? The numbers are out there. America SUCKS IT UP compared to the rest of the western world when it comes to heatlh. Our health care is to blame.

Also, the top news story the other day on Yahoo! was about how you're more likely to get a terrible staph infection in surgery rooms in America than anywhere else, and patients everywhere are returning home and dying. Go look up the costs of surgeries and procedures, even with the average co-pay. Now imagine if you didn't have insurance---- you still need doctors. What do they pay then?

If our system is so great, why do the numbers seem to fly in the fact of our "free market" health care system? No. It's broken. It's all about making money off of people like you, and you're going along with it. Am I socialist? Hmmm. By the above logic, maybe, but I would rather care about all of my fellow man, and also see through the propaganda on this issue. Capitalism isn't the best scheme in every circumstance.

 

[Crosshair]

On this single issue I feel it is a matter of morality.

There is your problem. In Morality vs Reality, reality always wins in the end. It does not matter how moral your ideas are. If Reality doesn't like your idea, it will kick your idea in the nuts, beat it with a crowbar, and dump its bloody remains on the side of the road without a second thought. History is littered with many such noble failures.

There are many things I believe are right as a matter of morality. I agree with you that providing health care to everyone would be a great thing to do. However, realistically, I can see that such a system is doomed to eventual failure. Observing other countries with National health care systems confirms this. Both systems are broken, just in different ways. Our current system is flawed because of its current implementation and needs serious reform. Socialized Health care is flawed at its very core.

Social Security and Medicare, great ideas. However, in reality they are ticking financial time bombs waiting to explode.

Being the world police and helping everyone be free and equal is a great idea. However as we can see around the world, that isn't working out so well in reality.

It is impossible for a perfect system to work in an imperfect world. There is no way for us to eliminate all suffering. It isn't going to happen. If our government can't run Social Security and Medicare in a fiscally responsible manner. How can they be trusted to run a national Health Care system without screwing it up?

The reality is that if you have insurance/money, our system is the best in the world. State of the art treatment is readily available to those people. Much of our current problem hangs on how health insurance is done in this country. There is not enough competition and it is too easy for insurance companies to dump someone who becomes seriously ill. Those are just two problems. Another is Illegal aliens taxing ER resources.

As the saying goes, "Capitalism is the worst system except for all the others." It's not perfect, but it is the best thing we have come up with so far.

 

[Marko Kloos]

You can scream socialist all you like. On this single issue I feel it is a matter of morality. A society can be judged by how well they treat the lowest of the low. I want to be a good samaritan. I would pay a few percentages more in taxes to let those low income, double-minimum wage working health insurance-less lower class that keeps growing every year in this country be treated for any and every condition.

And there's your problem: you think that your position is moral. It is not.

You claim that free health care is included in your "right to life and liberty."

Where's the right to life and liberty for the people who have to work for the money to pay for your free healthcare? Where's the right to life and liberty for the doctor whom you expect to provide that free healthcare? Any time you demand a right to something that others have to produce, you also claim the right to the time and labor of others.

You make the mistake of thinking as money as "mere dollars", and of those who like to keep their paychecks as "selfish". In reality, money is the product of someone's labor. Every dollar I earn represents the time and labor I had to spend earning it. If you lay claim to that dollar, you lay claim to my time and labor. If you claim 10% of my paycheck to pay for "free health care", you effectively hold a gun to my head and force me to work three days out of the month to pay your medical bills. There's no amount of good intentions that can excuse enslaving someone for your own needs--you might as well just buy a kid from Vietnam or Cambodia and chain them up in your basement to make clothes for you.

If you want to be a good Samaritan, I will not stop you, nor will anyone else. The truth is that your definition of "we need to pay for universal health care" translates to "everyone but me needs to pay for universal health care". Oh, sure, you'll kick in whatever you think is "fair", but you still expect the doctor to rack up a quarter million in debt and spend ten years of his life on school and residence simply for your benefit. You have no problem enslaving me to reach that lofty goal by demanding that the government confiscate money out of my paycheck for the rest of my productive life in order to pay your medical bills.

How about this? I pay for my medical bills, and you pay for yours.

If you don't agree with that, how much of my paycheck do you think I owe you for your medical bills, and by what right do you claim that share?

Why do 1 out of 4 of our babies die?

That is utterly ridiculous. Are you seriously claiming that we have a twenty-five percent infant mortality rate? Where do you get that ludicrous number? Our infant mortality rate is 5 per 1000, which is half of one percent--in other words, one out of two hundred babies. I'm starting to think that you don't have the faintest clue of what you're talking about.

You want to talk about life expectancies, too? Ours is 78 years. The UK's is 78.70 years. Denmark's is 77.96, despite socialized medicine and "free" health care for everyone. Japan ranks #1 of industrialized nations at 82.02 years. That's hardly an earth-shattering difference, despite your dramatic pleas. Life expectancy depends on more factors than the availability of socialized medicine, and even "free" health care doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

So the old people are dying. The uninsured are dying. The babies are dying. But hell. I want to keep a fraction more of my check. Screw my neighbor. Screw my fellow man. This is the land of the free, and freedom lives in my bank account, right?

You got it exactly right, albeit unintentionally. Freedom does live in my bank account. The dollars in there aren't just green pieces of paper, they are essentially vouchers for all the hours I put in to obtain them. (Incidentally, I got them from other people for providing a good or service they needed.) The more of those vouchers I get to keep, the more free I am. What better way to say "screw my neighbor, screw my fellow man" than to lay claim to a chunk of everyone's stack of time vouchers, just so the government can spend them on things you consider "fair"?

I noticed that you never answered my questions from my first reply to you. How many actual paychecks have you earned in Scotland, and what were the respective tax rates for VAT, personal income tax, gasoline tax, and sales tax over there? (All of those taxes need to be levied to pay for the "free" education and health care over there, you know.) How much money have you spent in your lifetime to provide for other people, either directly or through voluntary donations, other than the money that was taken out of your paychecks?

Don't talk to me about morality. You're the one who wants to take what he hasn't earned--worse, you feel entitled to it. No talk of dying babies and low life expectancies can mask the fact that you are merely a looter, one who doesn't even have the decency to mug his victims in person. You expect the government to do it for you, and then you have the gall to claim "compassion" and "social awareness" because you want to buy something nice for everyone with the money.

 

[Dilbert]

So it's morally right to steal money that I earn to pay for YOUR sniffles but it's not morally right to remove tyrannical governments and give ordinary people a chance to live freely? My neighbor doesn't have a car, he ran his last one into a wash and it got swept away by the water, should I be forced to GIVE HIM money to buy another car?

 

[defjon]

Well, I think a lot of that was rather silly. There is certainly no need for personal attacks. I'll be sure to take the high road and refrain. It is quite obvious that on this issue we'll simply have to agree to disagree. Opinions are like a certain part of anatomy, and everyone is entitled to them!

It ISN'T the same as looting at all. We're all connected, we are symbiotic. I don't understand this American mentality. YOU AREN'T PAYING FOR ANYONE. Yes, the taxes, again, are only SLIGHTLY higher than what we pay here in the land of the brave. However, every living person has free care for any problem for their WHOLE LIVES. YOU AREN'T PAYING FOR ANYONE! Every single item has that extra tax levied. Now, before everyone freaks out and starts screaming, "THEY TOOK OUR JAAAAWBS!", like I said, compare tax rates in Britain to here. It's worth it. Your jobless worthless fictionious neighbor ALSO buys food at the grocery, petrol for his mini, fish and chips with his beers at the pub...all of which puts his money in the pot. I understand it is a foreign concept, but no one is paying someone else's way in the national health care system. That just isn't how it works.

And, as I said...yes, I would pay slightly higher taxes so that the people that die unable to get treatment in this country could have treatment. To me, that is well...almost downright heroic!

Anyhow, some people, who've lived in oh, say...Texas their whole lives and want to bitch about social medicine and site examples while never experiencing it don't really have a frame of reference. However, Marko, I respect your firsthand experience in this matter. As you lived and breathed under social medicine and payed the taxes for 24 years (longer than I've been alive), you have opinions based on firsthand knowledge. I do understand where you're coming from, I do. I certainly don't EXPECT money from your paycheck, or for you to front ALL MY HEALTH COSTS (which doesn't happen, incidently, under any system). And at any rate, America continues to use private medicine and HMOs. I don't know what the future will hold, but I expect (especially on the neo-con side) any kind of social programs will be fought against tooth and nail.

Anyway, again, I respect your position and understand it. I even held the same opinion up until only fairly recently, when I've seen firsthand the devastation and downright cold blooded ruthlessness of the HMOs. They are not putting people's lives and people's health first.

Well, I gotta run to class. Hope everyone has a good day, and I wish you and yours good health.

 

[Limeyfellow]

How many years have you worked for a paycheck in the UK? How much per paycheck was taken out for the "free" social medicine?

Far less than the cost of buying medical insurance, paying subsidies for treatment and so on in the United States. If you factor in that, most people in the UK are paying less than their equivilents in the US.

 

[Marko Kloos]

I don't understand this American mentality. YOU AREN'T PAYING FOR ANYONE.

We most certainly do. You seem to think that it's not the case just because all our tax payments go into that nebulous "tax pot", but the diffusion still doesn't negate the fact that we do indeed pay for other people's health care, among other things.

Yes, the taxes, again, are only SLIGHTLY higher than what we pay here in the land of the brave. However, every living person has free care for any problem for their WHOLE LIVES. YOU AREN'T PAYING FOR ANYONE!

"Slightly" higher? Have you compared income taxes between the US and the UK lately? Our top income tax bracket is less than 30%, theirs is over 50%. That's just the income tax--now add to that the almost-20% VAT they get to pay on everything they buy at the store. Add to that the payroll deductions for health care, social services, and other piddly stuff. Then add the sky-high gasoline tax--we're talking over seven dollars a gallon, and the vast majority of that is taxes of some form.

And the "free care" they receive is turning out to be a free spot on a waiting list in many cases. (I notice that you didn't respond to a single counterpoint about the NHS system.)

What about your assertions about the 25% infant mortality rate? What about your claims about life spans? What about the tax rate figures I gave you? Are you going to address those circumstances, or are you just going to keep going by feeling? You keep making assertions, I refute them with numbers, and you proceed to completely ignore the points I make. Feelings aren't facts, you know.

I understand it is a foreign concept, but no one is paying someone else's way in the national health care system. That just isn't how it works.

With all due respect, I don't think you have the first clue about how it works, nor do I gauge from your answers that you have any clue about economics. Complicated theories aside, the system in a nutshell works as follows--the government takes money out of my paycheck, and uses it to pay someone else's hospital bill. How am I therefore not paying someone else's way?

Where do you think the government gets the money it spends on those doctor bills and medications? Don't you know that every last cent paid out by government had to be taken from someone's paycheck or wallet?

Lastly, if the atrocious health care and the cut-throat American system is so life-threatening, and the UK NHS is so much better, and the issue is so severe, and you have dual citizenship, then why aren't you already living there instead of here? That's not a "love it or leave it" kind of remark, but an honest question. If it's that bad, and your quality of life and life span are as severely impacted as you state, then why in the world would you subject yourself to the evil private system in the US?

limeyfellow,

Far less than the cost of buying medical insurance, paying subsidies for treatment and so on in the United States. If you factor in that, most people in the UK are paying less than their equivilents in the US.

Horse pucky. They may pay less for direct health care costs every month (premiums, copays, prescriptions, and so on), but they pay much more on the backend by paying much higher taxes on everything else, from consumer goods to gasoline taxes, in addition to having a much higher average income tax rate. In the end, the lesser expense in health care costs is irrelevant if the increased taxes in every other area of life make your disposable income and take-home pay much smaller. In effect, they're paying more for their health care, they just pay for it at the grocery store and the gas pump instead of in the doctor's office.

 

[Limeyfellow]

The highest tax bracket in Britain on income tax is 40% for people who earn £34,601 or over that tax free cut off, of £5,225. I am not sure where you got the over 50% tax rate. Most people pay between 10 and 20% which is no higher than the United States.

VAT is a little higher at 17.5% at the standard rate. There is also a 5% reduced rate for things like childrens car seats and domestic fuel or electrical power. The reduced rate makes many things less taxed. Then there is food, children clothes, books and newspapers, special equipment for people with needs that have a zero VAT tax rate. That is certainly less than the 4% tax rate I pay on food in the US.

National Insurance works out about the same amount of money paid in both the US and UK. In Britain this goes towards retirement costs. You pay nothing up to £100 a week. You then pay 11 pence per pound for earnings up to £650 a week and 12 pence per pound for anything over that.

Maybe you are throwing National Insurance in as part of the Income Taxes to get a higher price.