Reply to British Medical Journal - Failing health of the United States. A complete shambles

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The British love to talk about US healthcare.  Why?  Because they are insecure and the NHS is in shambles.  Yes, there are issues with US healthcare but a different set of issues than in the UK.  The British often face lengthy wait times and substandard care for serious conditions.  The NHS is great if you have a common illness or ailment.  NOT when you have breast cancer.   [/quote]

This is totally wrong. I am British and lived there until 2 years ago.  I had cancer in my early 20s and was treated on the NHS by one of the top hospitals in the world - the Royal Marsden in London. I had surgery, radiotherapy, and in-patient chemotherapy over a period of six months. I did not pay a penny and did not have to contend with one single bit of admin related to my health care. Just turned up to my appointments and hospital stays.  I was treated within 7 days of being diagnosed and in fact when the hospital couldn't get hold of me following the results of a biopsy, someone actually came to my address and hand delivered a note to request I called the hospital (my phone number on file was incorrect).

Yes the NHS is in a bad way currently due to recent government cuts (and a whole heap of issues I'm not going into now) but the wait times are much worse for non-urgent issues, not the serious ones that need immediate attention.[/quote]

So your anecdote means no one is waiting for cancer treatment in the UK?  Because publications and news articles say fohetwide:

Performance against the 62-day waiting time target in England has dropped below 80% for the first time on record, meaning in January this year one in five cancer patients (20.3%) – almost 2,500 people3 - had to wait more than two months for their treatment to start

https://www.macmillan.org.uk/aboutus/news/latest_news/nhs-performance-on-cancer-treatment-waiting-times-hits-record-low.aspx

[/quote]

No that wasn't what I said. I said the wait times were worse dor non-urgent issues. [b]But ultimately you can pay for private treatment if you choose and can afford it.  [/b]There are huge funding issues, yes, but it's not accurate to say that the care for serious issues is substandard.[/quote]

That says it all.  [/quote]
DP.. yes, in UK you can pay privately if you want, and it's cheaper than here, by a lot.

In the US, we pay $1500/mo for a high deductible plan, and never meet the deductible.  We spend probably $20K/yr on healthcare - premiums plus out of pocket, and the only reason we pay for insurance is because we are afraid that one of us might get a serious illness, then we'd be hosed even more.

In the UK, you don't have to pay for insurance. But, if you get seriously ill, like cancer, NHS will pay for it. If you want hip surgery without waiting, it costs about $12K. In the US, if one of us were to get hip surgery, we would pay $1500/mo insurance premiums, $7000 deductible. That's $25K - all in all, double what it would cost to get that one surgery in the UK.  Then the next year, you pay another $18K in insurance premiums because you don't want to be without insurance in case something else bad happens, while in the UK you pay zero in insurance premium because you know that if something bad were to happen, you always have NHS or pay out of pocket with all that money you have because you didn't have to pay $18K/yr for the past however many years.

How in the world does anyone think our *system* here is vastly superior to the UK?  [b]I'm not talking about the quality of care. I think that's a different argument[/b]. [/quote]

How can you not take the quality of care into account when debating healthcare?  I don’t want hip surgery in a crappy Understaffed British hospital with outdated medical equipment.

Also, uk taxes are insane and salaries are lower.  [/quote]

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