Nationalised health care

originally posted by: CranialSpongeI honestly don't see a national healthcare system ever happening in the US.

The insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospital shareholders, and stock market gamblers are all riding a mighty nice gravy train.

And they're not about to give that up without a fight... like, oh I don't know, perhaps buying off every politician in office to ensure that it never happens ?


Just a wild stab in the dark.

Oh, it can work. We just have to stop making it profitable for them.

Of course it would mean people standing firm as a united front. Now that is what you are never going to see happen.

If they did, and they all just dumped those useless insurance companies that keep them as money slaves, you would see a quick turn about.

a reply to: and14263

Are you sure you have your figures right on that? £400 pcm NI would be a wage of £75,000 per year, that would cover you and also any non earning dependants including a spouse?

£800 pcm would be just under £320,00 per year and in all fairness you should not be worried if your pulling in that kind of money.

As with all things it's a sliding scale that drops rapidly as your wage increases so lower earners pay a larger percentage of there wage than high rollers.

Check it out here if your interested link

a reply to: dawnstar

it really never was like that....

or you go to the er, and they send you a bill, that you have 30 days to pay before they send it to the annoying bill collectors, but hey, they can refer you to a company that will let you open an interest bearing account that you can charge you bills to!!!

Once again, I stand corrected for speaking out of only one side of my brain.

Indeed, anyone that makes a living wage, I think they consider that somewhere around $7.35, will most likely get a bill, and will be charged for any medical services rendered, when the party providing the care expects payment.

A hospital cannot refuse you medical care if your can't afford to pay, however, if you have a job they will bill you, and they will send you to collections if you don't pay that bill in a timely manner, regardless to the amount due. Some hospitals may be willing to work out an installment plan with you.

They themselves will not harass you. They will just sell you debt to a collection agency. The collection agencies hire the spawn of Satan, and they take great pleasure in doing their jobs, which is to make your life a living hell.

Indigents and the unemployed, if they qualify for Medicaid, will not be billed. Now qualifying is not easy, except for Emergency Medicaid, which all hospitals love by the way. I have seen American citizens, legal and illegal aliens get Emergency Medicaid.

In fact I know of three hospitals, not that long ago, that had illegal aliens living in the hospital as if it were a hotel. They could not safely discharge the person, because they had no one willing to accept responsibility for the basic activities of daily living the person needed. They were not allowed to send them back to the country they came here illegally from, because they refused to agree to go willingly. So sending them against their will would have been considered an illegal deportation.

If an American citizen tried that, they would have security throw your ass out, and they would call the police and press charges against you for trespassing.


I swear. You can't make this stuff up.

My experience of NHS Scotland (the state funded health provider of Scotland) is not very good.

The first hurdle is seeing the local doctor for a routine appointment. That could be weeks away because the diaries are so full. "Emergencies" get a telephone consultation. And you'd have to be a long time dead before the doctor visited you in your own home.

Hospital Accident & Emergency units, on a Friday and Saturday night, can be quite hostile. Take a tin hat and some headache tablets with you.

Provision of end of life care is genuinely poor. You'd rather take your own life than end up a geriatric patient on a forgotten side ward of a dismal long stay hospital in Scotland.

And that's with NHS Scotland receiving more funding per capita that it's English & Welsh equivalent.

There's room for improvement.

The real problem is that the NHS was never set up properly as the GP (family doctor) side is private but paid for by the NHS due to a lot of the senior doctors at the time not wanting to lose their money making system so the state at the time had to basically bribe them and which is why we see a lot of GP's doing stuff on the side to make extra money.

The system is basically a 1950's system bodged since day one and with no one able or willing to say "right...lets have a look at this properly" as the minister may only have 5 years at best and with something like the NHS changing it in 5 years is like changing Texans views on firearms in the same time....not gonna happen.

The problems such as long waiting lists are due to things like reducing the number of doctors being trained to save a few quid and even if they did up the quota's it'll probably take a decade to see the difference which is 5 years too long in uk politics

a reply to: DAVID64

Thing is in the UK

If you dont like the NHS you do have the option to go to a private hospital and the costs are a lot less than in the US.

originally posted by: amazing
I don't it's that far fetched to have a Universal HealthCare system. We have the money, that's not really an issue.

We already pay hundreds of millions every year for uninsured and hospital reimbursements and medicaid and medicare and VA benefits. If roll everything up it's billions.

And to top it off, most of that money is wasted. People without Health insurance wait until the last minute to get help and it costs the system thousands of dollars, when early treatment and prevention is so much cheaper. Universal Healthcare would be much cheaper in the long run.

Here's how we do it, just get one Universal healthcare plan, no options no nothing, it's the same for everyone. And even though it's good, it's basic. So therefore there would still be better healthcare/insurance options if you wanted it. It's just like when you have a job and you usually get to pick 1 of 3 or 4 plans from cheapest to most expensive and more inclusive.

We can afford it, it would be easy to do, and it's the right thing to do, morally and financially. It would save us money.

We shouldn't have anyone without insurance and obamacare was the healthcare savoir. Sorry, our last great change to healthcare was and will be an even bigger disaster as time goes on because we didn't focus on the right problem, namely cost. But we had liars pushing it and the gullible believing it was a solution. Not about to trust the clowns who pushed that crap or the gullible that we need more.

Also without addressing costs we are moving the problem, not solving it.

Finally we need to seperate folks. Don't necessarily mind helping a child with cancer, but mean or not. If you made a choice to over eat, doing a lot of drugs, excessive drinking, irresponsible sex, and so on, You didn't care about your physical health and honestly neither do I, and my wallet doesn't either.

a reply to: amazing

Here's how we do it, just get one Universal healthcare plan, no options no nothing, it's the same for everyone. And even though it's good, it's basic. So therefore there would still be better healthcare/insurance options if you wanted it. It's just like when you have a job and you usually get to pick 1 of 3 or 4 plans from cheapest to most expensive and more inclusive.

The Peckham Experiment

I don't know why your post reminded of this. It really is a good read, if you ever get the chance or desire to read it. It will not allow a cut and paste or I would share with you where some of my concerns lie.

As it has been said before, any ideal in its pure form is good. Unfortunately it is impossible to establish a pure ideal, no more than you can establish a sterile field, with your bare hands. We are naturally unpure, so we contaminate whatever we touch.

Haveing worked in pharma I can say the NHS is struggling trying to keep up with modern medicine.

Fact is the NHS in it present form is obsolete annd needs a complete overall. Dumping more money into it is pointless as it wont solve anything.

That is not to say the UK needs to adopt a dog eat dog hellish US style system.

People need to realize there are more health systems in the world than the UK and US (if you can even call it a health system ). And the labour party and SNP need to stop useing it as political blackmail and face facts that doing so causes just as much harm as the torys who are to scared to even touch it!


The UK needs to look at France or hong kong who are world leaders in quality healthcare and provide it to ALL citizens in a effective way.

a reply to: SprocketUK

Most of your health care dealings have been relatively routine. Do you live in a rural area or in an urban one? Parts of Canada have so few doctors that they have to hold lotteries when there is a space at their local GPs because there are so few doctors serving in their area.

Also, do you live in a wealthier post code or a poorer one? I've heard that sometimes with the NHS, your postcode can make all the difference for some treatments and how quickly you can receive or even how available they might be.

Also, have you ever talked to someone who has a condition that is not easily treatable with a relatively standard procedure or whose version of the condition happened to not respond either at all or well to the currently allowed NHS treatment regimen?

a reply to: ketsuko

Thats not much diffrent to anywere really.

Even in the US in my limited experience quality of hopitals vary from place to place.
I went to a really nice one in California and visited a dive in Chicago.
One was for a broken rib the other work related.

As for not approved treatment? That not much diffrent than insurance company decideing what treatment you can or cant get. Least with the NHS you can appeal as in my experience insurance companies decisions are final .

And in the UK you can go private and get the treatment there.

I was born over two months premature in 74 and spent 6 months in a special baby unit they saved my life.
Woke up a few times in an ambulance due to sports and they have patched me up after many a drunken friday night.
Had an op early this year and NHS staff are cool in my book.
I would pay a little more to prop it up.

As for personal experience i had one last week.

Went in to A &E with chest pains and was seen instantly.

Got the full works done even though I am young and at low risk and was treated well.

Even though tests came back fine they still kept me on watch as a out patient for a week.
Turned out to be bad acid reflux which they have treated and its gone.


Dont think I could ask much more.

a reply to: crazyewok

Not really. You can appeal the insurance too, and you can shop around for other insurance. At least before the ACA you could, post ACA all policies are more or less the same thanks to the regs. Denial doesn't mean no without appeal. I've had doctors go to bat before and gone to bat myself and worked out arrangements with the insurance.

You also always have the option to go out of pocket in the US, sometimes, you can get pretty good deals if the hospital knows you are paying cash, not insurance. It cuts their bottom line to not have to deal with the red tape.

But my comment was less about quality of hospitals than about the amount of funding allotted to different NHS controlling bureaus, similar to different school districts here in the US. It seems the NHS operates in a similar circumstance with different districts being allotted differing amounts which they then have to apportion and that can dictate a lot about who gets what treatments and how.

Another difference you have with the insurance in the US v. UK system is that it seems if you go private, the NHS can force you to go all the way private and cut you off. There was a man who wanted a certain cancer drug the NHS didn't provide. He offered to go private for it and pay for it out of pocket, and the NHS said he could, but that he would also be on his own for all his other treatment too.

originally posted by: boymonkey74
I was born over two months premature in 74 and spent 6 months in a special baby unit they saved my life.
Woke up a few times in an ambulance due to sports and they have patched me up after many a drunken friday night.
Had an op early this year and NHS staff are cool in my book.
I would pay a little more to prop it up.

The NHS covers zoos?
I had no idea.

But there are still two issues.

We need to be able to take care of people that can't afford health care and health insurance. How do we do that without some kind of simple healthcare plan?

2ndly, we tried to reform the healthcare industry/climate with Obama Care. Everyone wanted healthcare reform and people still do. At least President Obama tried. Republicans can only say repeal, repeal, repeal.

How about fix or replace? Both of those are viable options and what a mature person would do.

Here's an example. My computer at work breaks...it's not working right. I have to use it, I can't print with it. The alternative is costly printing at FedEx and other things. A republican would tell me to repeal it. Meaning I wouldn't have it for anything. A reasonable adult would tell me to fix it or replace it. LOL

a reply to: butcherguy

It was told at the time I had the look of a baby orangutan.
Red hair and not quite formed .

I have been trying to stay out of this somewhat as it is one of those topics that will never end.

The UK national healthcare system is flawed but as with all nationalised health care is a far better option than business led healthcare.

Some things should be beyond profit and I personally think that life and wellbeing especially of the vunerable is one of them.

a reply to: ketsuko

Not sure on that.

I have done dual NHS/private for a issue and they were fine with it.

I know someone else who did too so it strikes me as a bit strange that.

Maybe it was a past policy they changed? I will have to look into that.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: crazyewok



Another difference you have with the insurance in the US v. UK system is that it seems if you go private, the NHS can force you to go all the way private and cut you off. There was a man who wanted a certain cancer drug the NHS didn't provide. He offered to go private for it and pay for it out of pocket, and the NHS said he could, but that he would also be on his own for all his other treatment too.

Without knowing the full details on this is it not possible that the reason for this decision was that it created a conflict in treatment that the NHS was unwilling to be involved in? It's just a thought but if you could find a link or reference I would be interested to have a look into this.