Too, healthy people are productive people. If someone who’s ill keeps putting off a visit to the doctor because funds are short, there’s a good chance the illness will worsen and the person will be off work longer and need more treatment. If it’s not going to cost you a hundred bucks to get your problem looked at right away, you’ll be back at work much sooner.
Are you serious? So, like, if you have a cold or something, and you call up your HMO, they’re all, “Come on in today! Is now good for you? We have doctors standing by!”
Seriously, I’m an HMO customer, I’m okay with it because it’s inexpensive compared to the alternatives, and I’m still a pretty young guy with no serious health matters. But I thought the whole point of an HMO is that costs are reduced by not catering to the every whim of patients/customers. (As in, you’re supposed to great prompt care for urgent things, and sent to the back of the line if you mere want to see a doctor in order to complain that you are simply afflicted with the common cold.)
FWIW, I was covered by the NHS for the time I was a student in Britain. I understand there’s problems for many people, but in my experience, the NHS was virtually the same, if not slightly better than, any HMO I’ve had for routine doctor visits. For example, I was thrilled to find out that the vaccinations for travel to exotic places were nearly free in the UK, whereas I had to pay a couple hundred bucks for similar jabs under the HMO I had a few years prior.
For Canada, see Healthcare in Canada Survey.
U.S. healthcare stinks and you have to pay for it.
Mileages vary. I just watched the NHS provide cancer care to my mum for 3 years, culminating in hospice care, then at home, end of life care. They were superb.
This Sunday we got a doctors appointment for the sprog in 2 hours. That seems reasonable.
All in all, I’ve not seen anything in the UK that was markedly worse than countries I’ve lived in where I’ve had to pay for health insurance. Clearly, your experience differs.
Thanks for the support but I was thinking more about national polls that have a large sample group. Not that I don’t want to know what the dope thinks but I’m not the feller to do that thread (I would read it however).
That’s the stuff.
It appears that 37% (according to Canadjun’s cite) of Canadians do not think they “are receiving quality health care services” and according to this “54 percent, are now dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States.”
I’m not in an HMO, but a PPO, but my primary care physician is in a very big and general practice, where almost everything is in the building. They have advice nurses, who you can call of you’ve got a cold. If you are the 80th person with a set of symptoms, they can get your doctor to email your pharmacy with a prescription for the proper medicine. You get what you need without sitting in the waiting room for hours, it’s cheaper for everyone, and people who really need to see a doctor can get in faster.
As long as the advice nurse says come on in if something seems odd (which is our experience) this is a win-win.
Oops. Sorry.
I’ve never had to call the HMO for that. I call the doctor’s office and make an appointment. You have to call your HMO to see a doctor?
Some stuff with my doctor, who has been my doctor for about 19 years, is a matter of calling his office and telling the office manager what’s up and a scrip is called in for me to the pharmacy of my choice. Example I guess would be my hives, for which I cannot take corticosteroids (I’m allergic to them.)
When I call and say ‘I have hives again. Can the doctor call in my Atarax to the Target?’ they say ‘Yes.’ If they’re in my throat or on my neck, I show up, no appointment, and get a shot of epi and a scrip for Atarax. If I’m too far away there, I have to go to the ER where I usually have to convince the intern that prednisone is a very bad idea, but that’s because it’s SOP to treat hives with corticosteroids.
I think the longest wait I’ve had to see a doctor was two weeks for dermatology when nobody else could figure out what was causing the hives. The dermatologist never did either, although there is a biopsy of my hives frozen for all of posterity in UPMC somewhere.
I’ve had to in the past. My current HMO doesn’t have me do that. But it took me six days to get seen for something that was life impacting (insomnia).
Doubt it. Judging by the fact that you currently have an account here you are willing to work to pay the 15 bucks to post here. Furthermore, judging by a quick search of your recent posts you own a computer, like to listen to music, and like to watch movies. All things you have to work in order to pay for.
You are currently willing to work for luxuries, why would that change if the government provided health care?
Look, I don’t agree with athelas either, but he never claimed that the meaning of the word ‘right’ in English changed. Let’s try to argue points that people actually make, not made-up stuff.
You seem to be one of the relatively few reading for comprehension here. Unfortunately, August Derleth was male and so am I. 
I’d love the magic pot the countries with universal healthcare use to pay for that healthcare.
A white list is something that gets you through a Spam blocker.
I am pretty sure that very few people like the idea of hospitals closing, I am one of them, centralization is a dubious concept, the Interwab was originally designed to avoid it
I could give you horror stories from my own experience, and from people I know, I could also tell you strange things from people I know within the NHS.
I’m very pleased that you have had good experiences, however I think that you’ll appreciate that there are very good state schools and state schools that stink.
Amen!
Same for “if you can’t take a day off work to go see your doctor”… Spain doesn’t have sick days like the US does. If you’re sick you’re sick and you have the obligation to your co-workers to go see a doctor before you make everybody else sick or screw up something (at least that’s the law, what some bosses make of it is another matter).
100% of Spaniards who’ve never been in the United States for more than a week will tell you Seguridad Social sucks. Also, based on TV shows, 60% will tell you that the US has the best doctors in the world (the other 40% are faithful followers of Hospital Central).
100% of Spaniards who’ve had to deal with US medical insurance love Seguridad Social more than we love our moms. It’s quite a vocal chorus too, I’ve encountered other people who’d lived in the US when someone was whinning about SS and how bad our doctors are in a public place and several strangers including me chimed in to indicate that SS is absolutely great by comparison with the US system. “Hey, you’ve lived there?” “Yeah, Florida and Philly, you?” “Mississippi, two years… man let me tell you, I was dying to hear flamenco, and I can’t stand flamenco!”
I guess verb rights also include the rights to live, to be free, and to pursue happiness… yes? :dubious:
I think the Hamster ate my reply - how curious.
Why did you think I had one of those?
You seem a pleasant chap. But I vigorously disagree with your idea of ‘evidence’ to back up your claims.
You are ‘pretty sure that very few people like the idea of hospitals closing’ and you are ‘one of them’.
This is merely your personal opinion - -not evidence!
I posted a link showing how an election was won on the single issue of hospital closures.
In the 2001 Hereford and Worcester bye-election, Dr. Taylor took the seat from Labour with 28,487 votes. (The swing against Labour was 26.6%.)
Taylor was sponsored by the Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern Group.
This is evidence.
http://www.election.demon.co.uk/1997EC2.html
And I have done the complete opposite. So has Gary Kumquat.
Do you think this shows 66% of people are happy with the NHS?
Oh really? :smack:
And how many of each category are there?
How many of the bad ones are in deprived areas?
How many of the bad ones are faith schools?
How many of the bad ones have a good headmaster?
How many of the bad ones have a drug problem?
How does the condition of state schools affect the condition of the NHS?
We are not in the pub, saying which is the best band in the World.
We are on the SDMB, fighting ignorance.
If you say ‘the NHS stinks’, prove it. And not ‘because I say so’.
Give details of petitions. Show parliamentary debates. Cite newspaper campaigns. Provide polls showing what the public think.
Technically interesting, it looks as if a thread is blocked while someone has a ‘lease’ on it.
Basically you get served old stuff until the ‘leases’ expire or are completed.
Totally irrelevant on a bulletin board, probably the core code was adapted from a sequence sensitive transactional system.
BBs should work like UD/P but this lady is doing transactional TCP/IP