Reply to UK, Italy, France quality decline, now poorer than all 50 states

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "UK, Italy, France quality decline, now poorer than all 50 states "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]UK NHS is great for routine MD visits and for A&E. However, it has long queues (over a year is not so unusual) for a good sized list of medical procedures.

I likely would be dead if my heart issue had arisen while under NHS care -- and UK colleagues all agree -- because of a long queue (12+ months at that time) to get the needed heart procedure. By contrast, in the US I was able to get the needed heart MRI and other needed tests completed in a few weeks, then get the needed heart procedure completed within 2 months of the original incident. Waiting 12+ months for that procedure, my likely outcome was death.

What some UK colleagues do to work around the long queues when needed is to go private (outside NHS) -- curiously often with identical hospitals and providers. They have to pay through the nose when they do this. Medical debt is an issue there as well as here being one result. 
[/quote]
You are comparing apples to oranges. You were able to get the care you needed because you have good insurance in the US.

What you don't seem to understand is that you need health insurance in the US to get any care, and millions don't have it.  Sure, you could go to the ER, but usually by then, your illness has progressed so far that there's no turning back.

My cousin had no insurance and died of leukemia, stage 4 by the time they went to the ER.

By contrast, my spouse's mother, sister, friends who had cancer in the UK were all treated, for free, and lived.

The NHS will absolutely move you to the front of the queue if you have a life threatening illness.

We pay a staggering $1700 for 3 people for a hdp that's basically catastrophic insurance.  We looked into private insurance in the UK. It's half the cost. They don't cover pre-existing conditions (like the US used to do), but they will cover acute care resulting from the pre-existing condition. You can use NHS for the care that isn't covered.

Also, many in the UK have private insurance through their work. So, they have the best of both worlds, unlike us.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics