Government health care and its complaints

Be creful what you wish for.

I'm originally English, but I now live here in the US. I want to share a personal short story about the NHS.

My father passed away last October in a NHS hospital, after the staff had dismisssed my mother saying that he was "OK" and would simply be under observation. They left him by himself for a few minutes while they got him a blanket, and he died alone. My mother received a call from the hospital as she arrived home. The whole thing took twenty minutes. His death certificate listed 4 causes of death, and left out the most important, healthcare rationing!

This was the end of a rather long and sad tale of misdiagnosis, inability to get a second opinion, wait and see cancer treatment, let's try this medication, refusal to refer to specialists and more.

I personally visited his prostate cancer doctor with him three years ago. I did my research and confronted the doctor, embarrasing my dad, with his inadequate work. I got the "we don't have resources answer", but upon pressing him, found out that they get penalised for too many referrals and too many surgery requests.

I don't share this out of bitterness, I share it out of concern. My father passed away earlier than he needed to. It was, in my opinion, due to a system that fails. It became obvious to me that nursing and doctoring standards in the NHS were lower than when I left twenty years ago. It became obvious that treatment is denied due to budgets controlled by beaureaucrats and politicians. It was also obvious that the doctors withhold medical information from patients, who then can't ask informed questions.

Nationalised healthcare is only appreciated by those that need it, those that will never need it (because they will always have private care) and those that have never experienced it. The rest of us will pay the financial and personal health cost.

Why would anyone who has been to a DMV want the same people running their healthcare? It is beyond me. In fact I would not trust the government to take out the trash effectively.

every bureaucracy becomes a stifling mess eventually. Suppose your clinic is allowed so much money to run on. You get the same amounnt of money to run the clinic whether you see 20 or 40 patients. If the money covers 20 patients care, the others' care will be put off longer and longer. I guarantee, as a physician, that this is what will happen. The doctor's offices will become progressively more shabby. The result of government control of medicine will be disastrous from top to bottom, unless ,of course you are a government official.

I'm English, familiar with and fond of the US, generally considered right wing in Britain.

Alas, I have had a lot of experience of the NHS and also private medicine in Britain, including the draconian Whipple (an American procedure)performed in an NHS hospital.

The most telling fact is that despite very proper constant criticism, almost all Britons, right, left and centre, support the NHS.

No government would ever dare do anything other than support it.

That sets legitimate criticism in perspective and is a testament to democracy.

Britons generally are fascinated and a little horified by the US alternative. They can't quite get their heads round being forced to pay for medical treatment.

It is not a bad thing that two systems are common within the English speaking world, and important that they should constantly be compared.

Best wishes to you all
Patrick Gardiner

I find an interesting omission from all discussion of this subject in the US -- that is that one State, Louisiana, had what is essentially a universal health care system -- the Charity Hospital System. Anyone could obtain free or greatly reduced medical care at any of the Charity Hospitals. Since the system was instituted by Gov. Huey Long in the 1920s, it has a decades long track records to review.

In about 1989 the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals published a study on cancer incidence and mortality in Louisiana. As to cancer incidence, its major findings were that except for lung cancer (attributable to the high incidence of smoking), cancer incidence was at or below national averages. However, for cancer mortality, nearly uniformly across the board, the rates were above (frequently substantially above) national averages.

It is absolutely amazing to me that anyone makes the argument that nationalized health-care provides a superior medical product or experience than our current system. Look at the Walter Reed scandal from a couple of years ago! That was the perfect example of nationalized health-care on a small scale. Imagine how bad things would get if a government office were created to take care of the vast number of American people like the VA is expected to take care of a relatively smaller number of our service members.

Many years ago my friend and boss had to travel across the pond to London for a business trip. While there he suffered, what they believed at the time, to be a heart attack. He was admitted to the hospital and stayed 3 days. At NO time did he ever see a doctor, only internists. The doctors were coming into the hospital and up to the second floor to see the 'private patients', those who could afford to pay for their services. People in this country like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and others, who push this social medicine on us, will never have to depend on it. They will always have the best health care available because they can afford it.

What's good for the goose, is good for the gander!

Willi Schumacher

If your over 60 years old, and you live in a country with a NHS you will die if you need to many medical resources, its that simple!

There are some medical horror stories here in the states as well. Be it medical bankruptcy, or terrible service, people dying in emergency rooms after waiting for hours of service.Frontline had a very balanced episode about the different flavors of universal healthcare around the world (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/ )
What I took away from the program was that depending on the culture, healthcare run by the government as opposed to a free market system can work with varying degrees of success. Some of the tradeoffs which I think preclude universal healthcare from working in the US was what one doctor in Germany stated. Doctors don't drive fancy cars, make a lot of money or take fancy vacations. they make a decent living. That would be hard to swallow for one who excels and studies hard for 6+ years, with a mountain of debt, to then be saddled with that and a low salary for years. Japan seems to have a good system, but again one has to factor culture into this. The service provided in a DMV in Singapore or Japan is probably very different than what is provided in one here in the states. When I see how badly the government treats veteran's at the VA (with substandard service) I shudder to think what universal healthcare here will look like.

France has an excellent Government run system, but it is an exception, and the system is bankrupt.

In England, it is said that the unofficial policy of the NHS is "death is a very cost effective resolution to the costs of treatment." This seems credible when our relatives are forced to wait for months, even to see a specialist, who then might schedule treatment even further in the future.

Here in the US, this is unheard of, and the big teaching hospitals, Harvard, Stanford, etc., are full of patients from Canada and other countries where life-saving procedures are just unavailable.

We have only to look at Hawaii to see what a Government run system will do. Patients are being flown to the mainland, and, many could not survive the long flight. Doctors are leaving the Islands, and people are moving back to the mainland because medical care is bad.

The Democrats will not get my vote for this reason.

Let's take a look at their new policy which they just started last month:

"Since last month people have had the right to choose between any NHS hospital in England and any private clinic meeting the Department of Health's standards on quality and cost."

This will never work, they just released a survey showing "a big variation in the performance of NHS Trusts across England". The public is naturally going to rush to the best hospital, Then it will become overcrowded and its level of performance will drop to the same low quality as the others.

It's sad but they are stuck with the system they have and they will never be able to get rid of it because who in their right mind would give up free health care?

Let's hope we never fall in that trap.

All the politicos who favor government run medicine (spelled D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S) continue use Canada and UK and Germany as examples. Most Americans don't have any idea about what goes on in those countries medical systems. Why, I wonder, don't they ever compare it to a government run system that Americans are more familiar with...like medicare? Or perhaps the other universal system called...medicaid? How about the other government run medical system, the VA.
Now all we need to do is take any one of these "universal" systems where patients don't pay for their care and expand it to cover everyone. Same number of doctors, same number of hospitals,labs, x-ray machines etc. all government owned and operated, you know, like the post office. All fighting for the same number of finite government dollars you know, like FEMA.
Oh, at least the system won't be burdened with all those pesky folks in Congress.
THEY will have their own system, like they do now.
I always wondered why,if Medicare and Social Sec. is so good that our Congress people have a 'different' system.
Folks, this will be the biggest succer scam in US history ie. taking something that works better than anything else in the world...and trashing it.
AND THE PROPONENTS KNOW IT!!!!

3 flaws of the NHS:
1) The NHS has a huge budget (almost 100 bn GBP), 3 times larger than the budget of the MOD, but in the NHS, bureaucrats outnumber doctors by 3:1. The NHS would work perfectly if all those bureaucrats were replaced by doctors.
2) The NHS is Islamified, so Muslims can e.g. create double standards by refusing to accept medicines that contain alcohol.
3) Whenever the NHS fails, immigrants rather than MPs are used as scapegoats. The Brits don't believe that there is any reason other than immigration for the NHS's flows.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is promising "free" health care. Neither Clinton nor Obama is proposing anything like the system of national health insurance in Britain. Why don't you criticize the actual proposals they are making rather than a proposal that is not on the table.

Susan has a point so I went to Obama's website and looked at his plan and she's right it's not free. If you have insurance already you will continue to pay your premiums. He does promise to lower your premiums, I'm not quite sure how he intends to do this. Here are some of the features of his plan:

1. It covers every American.
2. If you already have Insurance your premiums will be lower.
3. He will offer a plan similar to the one Congress has to all Americans.
(You will have to pay premiums for this plan)
4. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
5. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
6. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.
7. It will require that all children have health care coverage.
8. It will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs.

Of course there is a lot more to it than what I've listed here, you can see the whole plan here: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

Every one of those 8 items listed above is going to cost a lot of money, what it all boils down to is, If you are a middle income American you will still have to pay Insurance premiums. And it's possible he might lower your premiums a little. But your taxes are going to go up. Someone is going to have to pay for subsidies, expanded eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP and to insure the 45 million that are now uninsured and I wonder does that 45 million include illegal aliens?

Obama knows that the American people are leery of nationalized health care, I think his plan is a way to ease us into it. I predict in his second term he will propose we go to a completely government run program.

Wow, to think we want more government control. It is our money and I don't want to be told I need to provide health insurance for others who do not have it. Most of us grew up as a child without any insurance. The man hit it on the nose when he said the same people who run the DMV whould be running our health care. What government office tries to go out of their way to make things run efficient? Do we really want our health in their hands?