What is your evidence for these claims about the NHS?
What is a white list anyway?
I use an NHS doctor, an NHS dentist and an NHS optician.
My previous link showed tens of thousands of people voting for the single issue of keeping our existing hospitals.
I’m afraid that your personal experience is **not evidence ** of a national malaise.
(If it would help convince you I could rattle off a list of operations my parents had on the NHS. They never had money for private health care, but still got absolutely free:
Besides the basic silliness of the op’s premise that healthcare coverage is the only reason to work, and its corollary that universal healthcare also means food and shelter provision, is the fact that universal healthcare does not necessarily equal all government provided healthcare coverage or all healthcare coverage is the same. There are lots of possible models out there to get to universal coverage. Single payor/governmental systems are only one of many possible ways to skin the cat.
I’m sure I participated in thread with almost the exact wording of the thread title a while back, but my search-fu is weak and I can’t find it. Anyone else remember?
Cool. Could you tell me the code I can use to get my health insurance to reimburse me for my grocery bills and my mortgage?
With homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and Medicaid we already have all you want. You can quit your job immediately, which will give you time to create more sterling threads here.
She didn’t say she wouldn’t get hungry or exposed to the elements — just that she wouldn’t die from those. Ostensibly, she would get free-to-her treatment, which I guess would include nourishment and shelter.
It’s true. Free healthcare would destroy my incentive to stay healthy. I’ve always thought of how great it would be to be chronically ill, but financial reality has held me back. But if America had free healthcare, I could live my dream and never see another healthy day.
When, exactly, was this? Could you provide a cite or some sort of reference to the fact that, in English, it is only a recent development that the word “right” refers to a right to a thing?
Well, if there were universal health care I suppose if you stood out in the rain and collapsed from hypothermia and malnutrition, the cops would pick you up and take you to the hospital where they’d treat your hypothermia and malnutrition even if you couldn’t pay. Yay, you! Except this is what already happens, a hospital won’t let you die of starvation or exposure as long as you’re in the hospital.
So what does this have to do with universal health care? How many people in the US starve to death because they don’t have jobs? There are people who starve to death, but it’s not because they can’t get free food, it’s because they’ve got severe mental health issues, or are the victim of someone with severe mental health issues, like that kid whose parents locked him in a closet for years.
How many people die of exposure? There are people who die of exposure, but there are homeless shelters available. There are always people who prefer to sleep on the streets to going to a homeless shelter, for reasons that seem good to them. And sometimes those people die of exposure. What should we do about those people…round them up and force them into a shelter? That shelter would then have to have bars on the window and be a prison, otherwise the people would just leave. We used to criminalize vagrancy, I suppose we could make it a crime to sleep on the streets and lock up all the homeless people, problem solved.
Except wait, we don’t have universal health care in the US, and we still don’t let people die of exposure or starve on the streets. So you don’t have to wait for universal health care to quit your job, you could do it today!
I have never under any HMO had to consult a nurse or sit on a waiting list to see a doctor when I’ve needed one. I have the option of calling a nurse on a toll-free hotline at any time, day or night, for answers to basic questions, if I choose to.
Which HMO requires you to contact a nurse who will maybe consult with a doctor and then decide if you’re actually seen by a doctor?
I have United Health Care and the last two times I went in for urgent care I saw a nurse practitioner. I’ve was also charged $350 dollars for one of the visits because the person I called to find the urgent care clinic at UHC gave me bad information. When I called to make these appointments I was told the wait to see the doctor would be 3 weeks.
The fact that I saw a nurse practitioner does not bother me in the slightest; it’s just when people say that universal health care means substandard medical treatment and the U.S. system means instant access to a doctor and the best care in the world I disagree. My anecdotal experience is that people who have/had access to a universal health care system love it. I would love to see some polling information to see overall satisfaction with the two systems (including the uninsured).
guppy, if you want to start that poll, I’m in. I also have never had lucky catsix experience. Health care around here is a bitch and I have reasont o complain because I’ve had something going on with my eyes and have had to visit the doctor several times.
If you can formulate a list of questions in a new thread…
As luck would have it, that places you in the minority. Most people want more out of life than three squares, a roof over their head and a hospital bed if they’re sick.
It’s not as if it is some sort of far-fetched hypothetical - most Scandinavian countries provide their citizens with just that sort of support system (bar a few hoops to jump through every now and then), yet the only people who really seem to abuse the system are those with a substance abuse problem. (Although, some seem arrive at substance abuse the other way: If your ambitions can be summed up as “sucking the public teat until I die”, substance abuse is one way to fight off the apparently inevitable soul-crushing boredom.)
The insufferable layabouts are there, but the majority by far will go out and try to build a better life for themselves and others. There’s the basic pride in accomplishing something. The basic enjoyment of what more money will get you - travel, books, movies. There’s gaining the respect of your surroundings. And if you want to be all scientific about it, Maslow talks about the need for self-realization, once the basics have been covered.
People like to improve their lot. It’s that simple…
