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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

NHS can be great but often not for non-urgent or non-critical care. I think it’s good to have those who can afford it taking out private insurance or paying privately. It relieves some of the pressure on the public system. That is kind of the Australian model.

I had both of my children under the NHS. It was great and I didn’t pay a cent. When my daughter was diagnosed with a kidney issue, she was immediately referred to a specialist at Evelina Hospital, probably the best pediatric hospital in the UK. When my son developed an egg allergy, he was immediately referred to Dr Adam Fox, one of the best pediatric allergists. This was about 15 years ago.[b] But if you need a knee replacement, I imagine you could be waiting for years.[/b][/quote]
But you could also pay oop for the knee surgery which is cheaper than the US. Or go to places like Thailand or Korea to get quality medical care.

At least you haven't been paying tens of thousands of dollars for basic catastrophic insurance like we have here, and then the crap insurance company could also deny the knee surgery. Then you have to spend many many hours on the phone with your insurance company fighting it.[/quote]

I don't pay tens of thousands for health insurance. You're clearly not working, I'm guessing? So it's a decision you made when you left the workforce. I do agree that [b]it's not ideal that health insurance is so dependent on jobs but that's what most Americans do and it does work out for most people. [/b]American healthcare is ridiculously expensive because it is also overly generous and risk averse (making it even more generous than it really needs to be, which is why bills mount up so rapidly). We can complain about the system (and every country complains about their system) but we do have to work with what we have and you made certain decisions that put you in this particular place. [/quote]

This is literally indentured servitude to have to work Full Time for a big enough company forced to provide decent healthcare plans till 65 just to afford healthcare.  a lot of people who could retire earlier or want to scale down to part time work are forced to either keep grinding for healthcare coverage or quit and be poor to apply for various subsidies. Guess which one is a more popular option?  And this keep driving costs for everyone too.  This system of employer sponsored insurance is a death trap that will eventually compound the issue so much that the entire system will collapse anyway. [/quote]

The average retirement ages in western Europe is comparable to the US so it seems like a moot point in the general scheme of things. Though I'd love for healthcare in the US not be job-specific. But pragmatically, I don't see a good alternative. T[/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