'Tell the USA your views on the NHS' poll results/discussion

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Fulham_Mark wrote: »

Loyalty to the NHS is very nice but let's not delude ourselves that the system is faultless

The NHS faults are:
1. Political intervention is huge. All the targets? money spent on popular health causes and and endless new strategies and changes to grab headlines

2. that joe public has little motivation to keep healthy and do all the checkups etc they should so. Our cancer treatment is v good but we spot cancer too late and do too few tests and checkups. I'd go for my cancer checkups if my insurance cover depended on it

3. It's almost impossible to sack incompetant doctors, surgeons and nurses. A very small number of people can do a huge amount of damage. It is only recently that performance data has been made available.

I hope Obama gets it right and we can move in his direction.

I voted B . The amount of people in the USA without insurance is staggering.

It's not just incompetent doctors etc who are hard to sack , fully competent nurses ARE sacked for exposing neglect and ill treatment of some elderly patients.

relaxtwotribes

Results show that 26% of voters have voted "A", which just goes to show that 26% of voters don't even know that the NHS isn't free.

relaxtwotribes

meher wrote: »

Aside, my understanding is that US too spends the same proportion as that of the UK on health care, the difference being in the UK everyone is covered, so I don't see why they shouldn't consider having an NHS.

Roughly, it's USA spends 16% of GDP and UK 8%. And of that 16%, about 40% is spent on administration. And with 40 million Americans uninsured, those are some terrifying amounts.

No wonder they don't want an NHS.

ElkyElky

I'm not a fan of the NHS at all. I'd rather go private and pay through the roof, than lay in a bed in over-crowed MRSA ridden wards. Yeah, the NHS does have some good points but the bad points out-weigh the good.

Agent_Smith_2

The debate is a far too Anglo-American centric. Especially as both systems are very poor compared to what exists in the rest of the world.

So, why not option G: abolish the outdated, outmoded NHS and move to a French, German, Dutch or Swiss etc universal insurance system.

:money:

ThinkingOfLinking

Somewhere between B and C.

tryingtoruletheworld

I can't believe some of the debate they have had in the states, middle America seems to be terrified of losing out if people in poverty are given access to healthcare. I was astounded at one debate I saw the other day, I can't understand how anyone could refuse to even consider a way to provide medical treatment for all, in a supposedly rich, developed country which lets its most vulnerable people die, because they don't have the cash!

relaxtwotribes

AFAIK, the poor get treated for free and the rich pay for insurance. It's the 40 million in between those two groups that suffer.

montymud

As an ex employee of the NHS I voted B. I loved working there and I believe that we are very privileged to have a system that offers affordable health care. It is absaloutley right that the nhs is not free for the vast majority of people - it is mostly for those under, on or slightly above the poverty line. I am quite passionate about the NHS but I am under no illusions about the faults within it. C Diff has been on the rise and we all know about MRSA, and the decision to cut TB vaccines when TB cases are actually slowly on the incline has not done it any favours. However the NHS is a system that still works despite what the media would like to fill the publics heads with. I am not saying that there has not been shocking cases of malpractice or down right incompetence but the amount of patients treated succesfully against those that have had troubles is quite different and still favours the NHS. The debate is a chasm of issues from Human Rights through to minor incident reports. I agree that just because something is free to some and costs less than private healthcare to others does not mean that it can carry out its practices in anyway it sees fit, on the contrary, it certainly needs to pull its socks up, stamp out incidents and provide a more efficent service and for me I will fully support the NHS as they improve because I believe they will improve. Any huge organisation is bound to hit some speed bumps along the way, its how they rectify the issues that will decide their future.

I very much hope that Obama attempts to be Beveridge, good luck to him.

Wayne1_2

There is a lot of hoo-ha about 50 million Americans not having medical insurance. As I understand it, this “Headline” designed to stir up all sorts of emotions, when looked at more closely has a different picture underneath it.
It seems that of the 50 million:

· One third are somewhere between the ages of 16 and mid twenties and have not got around to buying medical insurance yet – on the basis that the young always think that they will be Ok.

· One third has a household income of US$75,000+ (£46,000) and just do not bother to buy medical insurance.

· The remaining third, about 13 million people cannot afford to buy medical insurance.

This ignores the fact that the USA Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires that hospitals provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay. And there there is no repayment requirement.

There are also the stories of American families paying US$600 per month for medical insurance. For a family of 4 this is equal to US$150 per person (£91.00). This raises the interesting point:

· That, if fantastic health treatment can be bought for £91 per person per month, why is our government spending/wasting so much money. Our health care spend on the NHS is about £100 billion, but at £91 per month per person for a 60 million population here in the UK it would only cost the nation £66 billion a whopping great saving of £34 billion. Something that moneysaving experts cannot fail to be impressed by.

We should also not forget that USA taxes are generally lower so spending on medical insurance is not the personal issue that we have here where some of the population is spending £3 billion+ on top of their taxes to buy private medical insurance for whatever their personal reasons are.