Please feel corrected. The NHS is everything to all people. It will treat anything you can bring to it. You do not need to bring an ID card to get anything you simply turn up and you are seen to. This goes for emergency room stuff to general practice stuff (ie your family doctor) to see a specialist you need a referral from your GP. If s/he doesn't think you have x then he probably wont send you to see the specialist at least not without doing some investigations anyhow. The other thing about the NHS is that medications are available at a fixed cost. Currently I think it's about £8 per item. That goes for any medication, no matter what it's real cost it, and no matter what the quantity you are given. Also, the poor (on benifits), the young (still in school) and the old (pension age) get all meds for free.sunnyside wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it UK/Canadian private healthcare is a totally separate thing, and you can't just take your little ID card there and get anything. It's for pure out of pocket health care, using it is like not having any health insurance at all, which I don't think you're arguing for, so that seems a bit like a bait and switch.Rochey wrote: Source on that? In what way is US private healthcare better than UK or Canadian private healthcare?
Lets just get this straight there is no limit to what you can get treated for, any cancer, any transplant etc. A good example of this is the unit in our hospital. They are world leaders in brain surgery. They treat people on the NHS for free. They also have people fly in from the US to get private treatment in the unit. I know the people in the unit very well as we helped them run a study. It is that simple, there is no bait and switch.
In any case what I did find is evidence that the US system one average beats the UK and Canadian systems on average (at least for what they'd track).
Since so far all evidence anyone has found indicates a superior American system (at least for the 85% of the population with access), I'd say the onus is on you to show some high tech procedures or somesuch where UK or Canada wins out.
I don't understand what you mean by better. We have at least 100% of the population covered, I say at least as we will treat people from the EU if they're on holiday, as they will with us. There are world leading units within the NHS that Americans come to because the treatment is better, as there are units in the US that are better than those in the UK. Let's give you another example. In the hospital that has just been closed in Oxford (when we moved to our new site, they did all the work for Penicilin. Yes, it was discovered by Pasture but it was developed and tested in the UK by the NHS. There's a documentary about it if you want to go look. If it wasn't for that unit there would be no antibiotics.
OK, you seem to have flipped now. I think I'll leave you in the corner dribbling.The kids vs strangers comment is because of that. Even if you wouldn't admit the US system is better if we had a cure for all cancers, nobody in any of these discussions, Republican, Democrat, or reporter, is claiming that the Canadian or UK system of hospitals are better equipped or even equally equipped compared to US hospitals. Probably because they'd get totalled by the fairly easy to find MRI and other studies.
Therefore the choice many Americans feel the government is about it make is between the uninsured getting better care or their child getting rapid care instead of waiting weeks for treatments which may result in them dying when they otherwise wouldn't.
Again I'm done finding sources for you as you seem apt to simply ignore them. You find something where the UK or Canada comes out ahead. And no I'm not just talking about money. Cavemen have you beat there, and even in the US everybody has free access to caveman treatments (a little mud and leaves perhaps).
