A Reader asks:
“Why do you always diss the UK’s National Health Service in your news roundups? It’s not like we have anything like it.”
He’s referring to this sardonic comment under some catastrophe involving the above institution:
Basically — and even among a few otherwise-levelheaded conservative Murkins — a lot of people seem to wish that we had a similar institution (nationalized “free” health care) Over Here.
All I’m doing is simply pointing out the many and varied ways that such a system — even one like the much-vaunted NHS — can fuck up your life.
And that we should never.
A few years ago I broke 3 ribs. I was in a Colorado hospital for about a week. I had a bed that would set off alarms and call the nurses if I sat up while chiming and telling me to wait for help. I recovered, moved to Kentucky and later to Australia which has “free” healthcare. On the news a couple of months ago, a fellow my age broke a few ribs. His care was so bad he got misdiagnosed several times, ended up ballooning like a barrel from infection, and was dead by day 6.
Given that most USA hospitals are church owned and will treat anyone, the clowns who still believe it’s deficient compared to the shit that is socialist medicine should really go get a covid booster.
I agree the USA is not perfect for health care, but it is better than the rest of the world.
“The clowns who still believe it’s deficient compared to the shit that is socialist medicine should really go get a covid booster.”
And there is another problem… Some of the socialists reside here in the USA… and they not only get the jab themselves, they want EVERYONE ELSE to also get the jab.
WHY? I mean, if they have the magic vaccine and it works, why the fuck did the socialists force that bullshit on everyone else?
I used to work for the NHS. Like any organisation it has its share of fuck-ups. But they are relatively few and far between and that they receive the oxygen of publicity is actually good – how do American healthcare providers fare by comparison?
Our local hospital had a billboard running a while back which promised that if you didn’t see a doctor within 45 minutes after checking in, you wouldn’t be charged for your visit.
Also, our oversight system consists of legions of tort lawyers, so our medical establishment treads extremely carefully, sometimes even too carefully, but that’s the way with lawyers.
While I have no experience with the NHS, I did live under the Canadian system for 40 years. Like the NHS, it’s a single payer system, and at the time there was little or no private practice allowed. Even now private care is very limited. I was paying approximately 65% of my income in taxes to fund it. I lived in Toronto so wait times weren’t a thing for regular office visits, but specialists’ appointment wait times were measured in months, and waits for things like MRI and CAT scan tests were measured in weeks. When I moved to NYFC, I needed an MRI and they apologized because they couldn’t get me in until “tomorrow.” Now that I’m living in New Effing Jersey, our standard of care and speed of service is beyond good. From GP visits to hospitals and everything in between, we have it good here.
I’m lucky because we have very good insurance. Most of our friends don’t, with four-figure monthly health insurance bills, or worse. I can clearly see the appeal of an NHS-style system but the downsides are horrendous once you’re outside of a major metropolitan area. For someone stupid enough to move to the Canadian province of Quebec, you will wait 6 to 8 *months* before you are assigned a doctor by the Health Ministry. You don’t seek out a doctor, one is assigned to you. Let that sink in.
I would honestly prefer the western European system, to be quite honest. Similar to “Obamacare,” with without exception. Everybody has to pay in, price or pauper alike. Yes, taxes are higher than we pay, but with zero health care costs it comes out in the wash, and the care is orders of magnitude better than NHS or Canadian Medicare.
“I was paying approximately 65% of my income in taxes to fund it.”
I was in Maine many years ago, in a hotel hot tub. Who comes walking in is some nose in the air Canadian cock sucker with a holier than thou attitude. Arogent prick starts talking about how America sucks, that all we Americans care about is our guns and that the murder rate is due to guns.
Then the fucking asshole starts on his shit about how the healthcare system sucks and how if his daughter gets sick she gets healthcare for free while many Americans, especially the poor will rot.
I asked how this is all funded and paid for. Dumbass said it was free. I asked what he and his wife did for a living. School teachers. Of course, card carrying fucking socialists. I asked the tax rate, he said about 50 percent on income.
He then said when he visits the USA he stocks up on wine, chocolate and other provisions as “those goods are taxed highly in Canada”
High Taxes. Ain’t that the rub?
In addition to building a wall to keep the Illegals crossing from Mexico, we also need a second wall to keep these communist asshole from Canada from getting in as well.
A-a-and in this corner, licking its chops, the Veterans’ Administration…
.
Veterans should be able to go wherever they want, zero cost zero deductible.
Illegal immigrants are treated better than veterans in America.
I would gladly pay taxes if they went to a good cause like the veterans.
Right now the money is funneled to the largest organized crime ring in the country, the politicians.
You can consider all socialist panacea programs as just theft, over the long term.
Incompetence, corruption, misappropriation, and waste, all take their toll.
In the end, rationing and lack of service and resources are the result.
Interesting… Like gun buybacks, another socialist program.
After the govt buys back guns they never owned to begin with from stupid asses willing to take 50 bucks to 100 bucks for a gun usually worth more, the USA then sends guns and other arms to foreign countries, ZERO background or NICS check required.
Everything I feel I need to know about the NHS – and by extension, how socialized medicine would work anywhere – is summed up by the following;
Carl Giles was a cartoonist and a British institution from WWII until his death in the 1990’s. He drew three single panel cartoons a week for the Daily Express, and these were collected in Annuals, starting in 1946. He was also a Socialist as a young man, so you would think he would by sympathetic to the NHS. Yet, he started mocking its failures and dismal esp as early as the mid 1950’s.
Speaking of which, radiologists working for the NHS are now expected to ask men if they are pregnant before continuing:
https://voxday.net/2024/08/11/clown-world-never-rests/
Dumber than that kid in Kindergarten Cop, they are.
I didn’t know that bologna smokers who were born with a penis and take it up the Hershey highway were capable of getting prego.
You learn something new every day
Seeing as they’ll get fired (or maybe sued) for “misgendering” a “trans-man”, and equally mistreated if they damage said trans dude’s baby by irradiation…
I suppose that will be the one benefit to Britain officially becoming part of the Caliphate; this trans idiocy will disappear real fast.
you have something like the NHS. It’s the VA.
And Medicare is reasonably similar as well.
Bloated bureaucracies that care less about the patient than they do about having all the required progress meetings and forms handled.