Where I live in the UK we have the National Health Service. It employs the largest amount in the public sector – over 1.3 million people. Think of it.
Everything is predicated on targets but that doesn’t mean that everyone will get what they need medically. We have a service that is post-coded so that if you live in one part of the country where X drug is given freely on the NHS, it doesn’t mean that it will be given somewhere else. Has to be ‘cost effective,’ you see. Additionally, certain medications will not be prescribed by doctors if again they are considered to be too expensive. So it means that you can literally die if your doctor decides not to prescribe it.
There is a lack of MRIs and CT scanners. There is an acute (or even chronic) lack of intensive care beds. Nursing staff (believe it or not) is in short supply and we have to employ nurses from as far away as the Philippines and Africa. Indeed, we have employed so many nurses from Zimbabwe that there is a chronic shortage there.
Our system is ‘free at the point of access’ which means that every illegal immigrant and asylum seeker can use it. We also have medical tourists who come here for their medical treatment, notwithstanding that it’s pretty much on a third-world standard in many departments.
You can wait six months to a year for results of tests; you may not get the cancer treatment you need; you will not be offered expensive treatment if your GP or hospital doctor doesn’t think it necessary to further investigate a problem; a pap smear can take over three months to come through, yet we offer IVF and transgender operations on the NHS for free.
Personal friends of mine, consultants in my local NHS hospital, talk of their fury of the form filling and mind-numbing boxes that they have to tick instead of treating their patients.
My son, delirious in an infectious diseases ward, took himself off the ward with catheter in his arm and various electrodes attached. He wandered back there in the afternoon and they refused to have him back saying that he had discharged himself!
Is this what you want in the US? It doesn’t work! We do have private health insurance that will cover you by choice but is very expensive and not everyone can afford it. Will you have that provision?
Your new socialist (and, to my horror, deeply racist) president, doesn’t appear to know what he is doing. By pushing this bill through, with all its attendant problems, seems to me to be callous beyond compare.
