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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Statistically, I won’t need a hip replacement. That’s American pastime. You don’t like stairs or walking and there we have it.

Anyway, what are you arguing about?

London is amazing. [/quote]

Statistically, it’s the stairs and walking (and even more actual athletic endeavors) that leads you to have a hip replacement.  And old age.  If you live to a certain age and were even just a little bit active you’ll need to get joints replaced to maintain that level of activity.

The UK definitely gets in the way.  I’d hate to rely on the NHS for anything other than emergency care.

[/quote]

luckily you dont have to. the wonder of it is that [b]the NHS is there so no one has to die or suffer because they can't afford healthcare[/b], the mark of a civilized society, but you can also have private insurance. [/quote]

This is a liberal American’s fantasy.  The NHS sucks if you’re used to BCBS PPO or equivalent, or Medicare.  It’s more along the lines of Medicaid with forced provider participation.
[/quote]

also i lived in london for 30 years so it's not a liberal americans fantasy.[/quote]

Nope- we have a family member who married a UK citizen and they moved there.  New spouse got cancer a few years later and had excellent care there, especially and including the end of life palliative care, which included things like delivering a hospital bed to their home and other medical equipment so the spouse could continue living at home.  That's the benefit of a fully integrated system- it's of course much much cheaper to have a person stay at home and not use hospital services, but doing things like getting an insurance company in the US to cover a hospital bed would make you pull your hair out and probably take months to get approved.  And then of course after the spouse died they have a service to come and pick up the bed and equipment- because they have a fully integrated system that does this sort of thing all the time.  This is all within the last 10 years BTW, so pretty recent, not some fantasy of how things used to be.

Also read Rob Delaney's memoir about his son's cancer and the amazing care he got through NHS.  Of course it's not perfect but I am willing to bet you just haven't had anything complex you have had to deal with an insurance company on before.  Once you go through that once or twice you realize how ridiculous our system is. There's a reason every other industrialized country has a national health care system, and they spend on average half of what we do on health care (as percent of GDP) and have longer average lifetimes, to boot. The only people for whom the US system works better is mostly healthy rich people.[/quote]

DP. Medicare/Medicaid delivered the hospital bed and oxygen tank to my mom's home for free too, when she went into home hospice. And after she died they picked it up within a few days, too, for free. Medicaid does this for anybody in hospice care, and you don't have to be low-income/assets or 65+, you just need a doctor to say you have 6 months or less to live.

Look, I too think the US system sucks, mainly because so many have bad insurance. But if you're going to plug the NHS, give us some real examples, not hospital beds. How was the cancer treatment before your family member died?[/quote]
dp.. the difference is that medicare and medicaid are not universal healthcare.    NHS is universal healthcare.

My cousin died of cancer in the US because they had no insurance.

If you have good insurance in the US, it's great. The problem is that there are millions who either don't have insurance or are under insured.  Many are on high deductible plans, so they don't even go to the doctor unless it's an emergency.

Why does a medication here cost so much more compared to the UK or even in Europe?   I looked into getting my DC's inhaler prescribed in the UK because it's like $15, compared to $80 here.  It's ridiculous. They get it from the same manufacturer.  I once had to get the inhaler in Spain, and it cost me like $10. I looked at the inhaler and compared it to the one we got from the US, and it was the exact same.

Why is a thread about London now about the NHS?[/quote]

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