Sorry, 77% meet the lofty goal of 18 weeks after referral from a doctor. That means 27% don’t even meet that. Sucks if you have cancer. Sucks if you’re a whistle blower. If the government is giving a blind eye to the problem then so are the recipients of it. If you try to get treatment on your own because of a 5 month delay you’re barred from further treatment.
It’s a great system as long as you don’t get sick.
Yes indeed, there is “rationing” going on. Those in the medical community refer to it as “triage”. This means that cases that need to be seen to quickly are. Those procedures that are important are given priority. If your relative has a boo-boo on their pinky finger, they will be seen less quickly than someone with a heart attack. …
Even if the heart attack patient is a stinky poor person who does not know their place, and your relative is a rich, important person. For that’s what frequently pisses people off about “waiting lists”. It’s all about “how come I can’t BUY my health at the expense of the poor scum who deserve nothing.”
In the US system, you have waiting lists for care too. They are based on how much you earn, or if your insurance has not cut you off. Rescission is a real and ever present danger to the insured, as is cancellation of benefits to increase profit.
It’s great to have insurance in the US, unless you get sick.
Look at the health outcomes of the two countries, and look at the effective cost of healthcare in terms of percent of GDP spent. Then I imagine you’ll come up with the usual excuses about how the US population is “exceptionally fat” or in “exceptionally poor health”, or is “exceptionally something” to hand wave that away.
We don’t have the delays found in NHS countries. the poor get the same care that everybody else does. There is no triage unless you count a couple of hours wait at an emergency room. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pinky finger or heart by-pass surgery. The wait time is the same. People come to the United States when they want good care in a timely manner. They don’t go to Canada and they don’t go to the UK.
We get more health care because we spend more. We spend more because we CAN. When it comes to relieving pain, or cancer treatment or something urgent such as heart bypass surgery we get it on-demand. There is no waiting period.
If your satisfied with the triage and rationing of your health care system that is your business. I hope it works out for you. If it doesn’t, you’re more than welcome to visit. However, to come on this board and criticize a faster system because it’s more expensive is pointless. We want the service that national healthcare systems don’t provide.
Wow.
pdts
But how do you explain the worse health outcomes in the United States?
Also how do you explain the fact that more people in the UK report that they are able to see the doctor they want, sooner?
The UK sucks of course, in comparison to the top performer: France.
And by the way, people from foreign countries routinely come to the UK for medical treatment, and pay for it. Where on earth is this idea coming from that it’s only the US that gets medical tourists?
pdts
So, good rap, eh?
I don’t know, how do you explaina better cancer survival rate? How do you explain better survival rates for people who’ve had a heart attack?. This doesn’t even address the quality of life issues from having knee or hip replacement in a timely manner.
I can walk into any urgent care center at-will if by some chance my doctor was busy. If he refers me to a specialist that’s backed up I just have it changed to someone who has a slot open.
That would be news to me. Can you give a cite for this? I’d sure hate to wait for needed medical care if the only game in town is selling it to non-citizens. That can’t be popular.
meh. It has some entertainment value.
I know it’s weak sauce, but check out this story:
By the way, ‘consultant’=the most senior normal rank of doctor.
pdts
Those are awful statistics. They get those stats by looking at who’s had cancer or a heart attack, and then checking to see if they’re still alive however long later. Cancer and Heart attacks happen in greater numbers to older people, who are more likely to die of an unrelated cause shortly afterward, and those rates aren’t corrected for that. I’ve read in many places that those survival statistics in general are unreliable and shouldn’t be counted as an indicator of good/bad care.
Mortality rates are much better indicators.
'Fraid elbows is right.
I had no job, no insurance, no dough, in the late 80s.
No med treatment for me.
They most certainly do.
Britain is very lax about charging people who are not eligible for treatment on the NHS. ‘Health care tourism’ as it’s known is a bit of a problem.
Reading through this thread, I get the impression that you’re not satisfied with anything less than perfection. The U.K.'s NHS isn’t perfect by any means and has many of the problems that beset large bureaucracies, but it’s damn good generally, and has improved immensely these past 25 years. If you have a condition with which you can live for a while, you may be asked to live with it. There are a limited number of doctors and nurses. Don’t you think it’s more appropriate that people with more serious conditions than you get seen first? If you can’t live with it, you go back to your doctor or call an ambulance. If you have a condition which requires emergency treatment, you’ll get it if possible.
The law in question is EMTALA. Under that law, hospitals which accept Medicare (which is most, but not all) are required to provide treatment only to the point at which the patient is stabilized. This could mean that even an acute condition is not fully addressed, just that a patient is brought to a point where they can be safely discharged or transferred. Once a patient is in stable condition, there is no obligation to do any more. That’s not medical care, that’s emergency care. It doesn’t keep people healthy it just stops them from dying when something very serious goes wrong.
No they aren’t. I got desperately ill in a small town in a tourist area that has a medium-sized college and lots of pretty mountain vistas, but not much else. I couldn’t get an MRI at their little “regional hospital” and had to be transferred to the large teaching hospital ~90 minutes away to get anything more than an x-ray, IV and painkillers. A lot of rural areas have small hospitals without MRIs (and in some cases, without CT scans either) and it’s typical that accident victims end up being airlifted to the nearest big city.
Imagine if this lady had her accident in the U.S. and found herself without or not covered by insurance.
Could you please cite the claim that every single American hospital (or at least, say, 99% of them) has an MRI machine?
Serious question: If I’m poor and don’t have health insurance and I need a hip replacement or something, how do I get one without remortgaging my house or spending my life savings?
The myth that Brits don’t have a choice of medical practiioner is a serious distortion.
I know of a preson who absolutely needed a hip replacement, and selected a particular practioner based on recommendations from other surgeons. He had to travel some distance, but he chose his consultant, and had his operation.
I have had to be somewhat vague here so as not to breach any confidences.
Now it is also true that many Brits do not know where to find the information about who is the best practitioner in their field, however the choice is there, as is the data, you jsut have to get your ass in gear to find it, and this is no really a great deal differant to the insured in the US, except for one thing, the only criteria is the need for treatment, you would not find someone denied treatment by a non-clinical worker such as an insurance assessor, and you would not find you cannot get the operation merely because your insurance policy does not allow you to attend a particular medical practice.
I also note that not once have any of the pro Insurance people have they ever addressed the fact that healthcare rationing in the US takes place through the ability to pay for insurance, I have seen other posters mention it on the pro-UHC, but not by the against UHC.
US healthcare is rationed, the insurance industry rations it through their policies and what they will cover, and it is also rationed through ability to pay. It means that a significant number of US citizens don’t even make it to first base, they don’t even get to join the queue.
A well covered person will be pleased that they can obtain non-emergency surgery quickly, but this fact still does not make this form of medical care effective for the entire population.
If you believe this to be true, you are completely detached from reality. You have no understanding of the health care in your own country, and you are absolutely incompetent to judge the health care in other countries.
You are creating your own “facts” to fit your preconceived notions. You seem to be taking the excellent care that certain INDIVIDUALS can have, and assuming that EVERYONE in the country has identical care. They do not.
The US spends more on healthcare, and ranks well down the list of health outcomes.
I already cited that this was not the case.
Come off it: medicaid covers people who are dirt poor, not people with houses and life savings.
Suppose you are working poor. No insurance, but can afford to put food on the table. So no medicaid.
How do you get your hip replacement then?
Seems to say you might have to sell your house and spend whatever savings you have. You might say that’s how it should be, but let’s be honest about it.
Whereas in the UK, you might have to wait a month or two (or three) longer, but you won’t have to pay a cent. Hell you won’t even have to pay for your food in hospital.
Imagine if you had to pay the police every time you called them. And that if you didn’t have ‘police insurance’, you would have to pay a huge amount. And that police insurers would try to retrospectively deny your claims. And that the police were only legally bound to help you if you were in serious danger of dying soon.
A horrible system, right? One that would create a huge amount of anxiety? Something they might have in Somalia.
Because that’s how the US health system looks to other countries.
Oh, and as a Brit living in the US (with good insurance), and a frequent user of medical services… I find the UK to be much superior. The patchwork of private businesses you have to interact with here is horribly inefficient.
pdts