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Originally Posted by dda
You are badly misinformed. There is no one in the U. S. who is outside of the "safety net". It is the law in the United States that no one can be refused health care if they present themselves to a hospital or emergency room.
The health care bill will (by estimate) reach approximately an additional 2% of the population at a cost of 900 billion dollars.
If the U. S. goes bankrupt, which it surely will if it does not do something to curtail its reckless spending, health care here and in much of the world will be adversely effected.
Am I to understand that the British Health Care Service (or whatever it is called) is a smoothly running machine which provides fast and affordable care to all of its citizens? There are no lines? There are no procedures, medications or treatments which are subject to governmental approval? I do not intend to suggest that there are. I do not know what goes on in your system.
I do, however, know that there are large numbers of Canadians who slip over the border in order to receive health care in a timely fashion rather than wait, sometimes with deadly consequences, for their health service to authorize treatment or to wait until the service is available (sometimes months in the future).
I do not argue with the idea that health care should be affordable and available to those who need it. I do take exception to the idea that it is unavailable to anyone in the U. S. I take even stronger exception to the idea that the government can run such a large undertaking more efficiently than the private sector.
There are many ideas which have been proposed which could reduce the cost of health care and thus make it more easily accessed by those that currently have to show up to hospitals or emergency rooms to get treated for ailments free of charge.
It is also not well publicized but true that the poorest in our society already have universal health care. Most of those without health care fall in to two categories, illegal residents of the U. S. who are afraid of being deported if they come to attention of the government (without basis in that hospitals and health care givers are forbidden to inquire about legal status or to report suspected illegals to the authorities) and individuals between 18 and 30 with the means to purchase private insurance who chose not to because in that age group health care is frequently not an issue.
As someone once said "governing is complicated."
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The point of any system should be to provide 100% cover (I would not be as happy as you seem to miss 2% of our population, let alone yours).
Your present system is awful - we're not going to debate that.
All this absurd talk (and we heard it by the way, not exactly the best diplomatic move to have your politicians spouting inacurate rhetoric which painted Britain as though it were communist russia ...) about "death lists" and such rubbish is completely counter productive.
The NHS does not have queues for life threatening healthcare. Despite anything you have heard.
Will you please remember that i am further from being a socialist than you are!!
This is why the greatest outrage is
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You pay the most per head for healthcare in the world.
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Was my starting point.
So when you say "I take even stronger exception to the idea that the government can run such a large undertaking more efficiently than the private sector" - all i can say is have you looked at other countries?
In addition please be advised that far from being some communist hell, a nationalised healthcare system does not even preclude the private sector!!!
IF you want to you can still buy health insurance and you can do what your suggested Canadians do and "queue jump" for specific things - we have a private healthcare system in addition to our national.
- IF the national system did delay essential healthcare, then our private system would be a damn sight bigger than it is. Instead it is limited to essentially cosmetic procedures.
The fact is
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you look really really weird to the rest of the world
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was probably a bit kind. Given we know what is going on you actually look a bit barbaric.