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This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

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Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#31

Post by newbie12 »

27182818284 wrote: post #21
newbie12 wrote: post #17

The author's father, Bill, around age 76, never paid taxes while living for decades in the UK, but was still treated, and died there. The author assumes he wouldn't have had care in the U.S. That's wrong. Even though he never held a recognized job (and probably was a tax cheat), as a senior citizen he would probably receive Medicare and as a poor person he would also potentially be supported by Medicaid for any short…

>or his family For the same reason that you don't go to jail just because your brother robs a bank? Hey it is nice when family helps out, but they shouldn't have the legal obligation.

They should if he leaves them an inheritance.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#32

Post by marknutter »

abstractbill wrote: post #19
oneandoneis2 wrote: post #6

I was in America, in LA, a few years back (I'm British), when the whole Obamacare thing was being debated everywhere. The one thing I noticed, and it was a rule that didn't have a single exception, was that everyone I talked to could give at least one example of a time when either they or somebody they personally knew had been faced with a ruinous bill for healthcare. People who'd been bankrupted, people who'd fled t…

Having lived in the uk for the first 27 years of my life, and then in California for the past 10, I have only one word to describe the way American healthcare feels to me: barbaric. Long live the NHS, and yay for Obamacare - it seems like a step in the right direction at least.

Why does it seem like a step in the right direction, specifically?

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#33

Post by rdouble »

bunderbunder wrote: post #20
rdouble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to turn someone away from the hospital. Access to primary care is another story altogether.

It's illegal to turn someone away from the emergency department . For the other 90% of the hospital it's a different story entirely.

Right, but there's no other front line of entry to anywhere else in the hospital. If a person walked to a hospital and demanded to see a brain surgeon they would be turned away even if they had health insurance.

A major issue with the american health care system is there is a severe shortage of front line care outside of the ER. This is a side effect of the way doctors are compensated. There is no financial incentive to be a GP, so there aren't enough GPs.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#35

Post by ahi »

danso wrote: post #8

Some excerpts: He was a charming, damaged, charismatic, fiercely intelligent, dissolute individual, who lived entirely on his own terms. As a professional gambler, it is unlikely he paid much if any tax in 37 years. He had no will, no funeral plan. He never did fill out the forms necessary to vote in the last election, or the one before that, as I discovered. He just hated forms. I could sympathise. Had he stayed in…

The problem with the TANSTAAFL argument in this case is that the NHS is far cheaper than the American alternative. It is also far superior at providing preventative care than the American alternative.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#36

Post by newbie12 »

flexie wrote: post #26

When my wife gave birth in Europe the 11 hour procedure, which apart from the traditional medical stuff, included massage and acupunture for relaxation, involved a handful of nurses, 3 midwives, 2 doctors, an anesthesiologist etc. After the birth our little family stayed in the 300 square foot private room at the hospital for two days. We never saw any papers except the booklets the hospital gave us about having an i…

This is an indictment of the U.S. legal system, not the U.S. healthcare system.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#37

Post by 27182818284 »

newbie12 wrote: post #31
27182818284 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or his family For the same reason that you don't go to jail just because your brother robs a bank? Hey it is nice when family helps out, but they shouldn't have the legal obligation.

They should if he leaves them an inheritance.

That's an interesting idea. Directly I'd still say no, they shouldn't, but indirectly via an inheritance tax I'm OK with as I'm OK with inheritance tax in general.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#38

Post by aplusbi »

newbie12 wrote: post #17

The author's father, Bill, around age 76, never paid taxes while living for decades in the UK, but was still treated, and died there. The author assumes he wouldn't have had care in the U.S. That's wrong. Even though he never held a recognized job (and probably was a tax cheat), as a senior citizen he would probably receive Medicare and as a poor person he would also potentially be supported by Medicaid for any short…

I think the author's point was that his father wouldn't have bothered to fill out the paperwork required by Medicare so the fact that the NHS is automatic allowed his father to have coverage.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#39

Post by GiraffeNecktie »

marknutter wrote: post #32
abstractbill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in the uk for the first 27 years of my life, and then in California for the past 10, I have only one word to describe the way American healthcare feels to me: barbaric. Long live the NHS, and yay for Obamacare - it seems like a step in the right direction at least.

Why does it seem like a step in the right direction, specifically?

One reason is that it represents the first acknowledgement that health care is something that every man, woman and child should have.

That's not to say there aren't horrible things about Obamacare (i.e. terrible business model) but yes, it's a start.

Re: This is how you healthcare: American Death in London

#40

Post by potatolicious »

carbocation wrote: post #24
bunderbunder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it does refuse to treat people quite regularly. Aside from emergency department, health care providers are generally free to refuse care for patients they believe cannot pay except in the case of a life-threatening emergency. What this means is that in the USA it's common for people to have to allow earlier-stage, less expensive to treat problems develop into serious problems before finally going into the E…

> Actually, it does refuse to treat people quite regularly. Let's not play with words like that. People in the US get treatment—you even say so later, despite your ominous lead sentence. They just get it later, via the ED, after prevention goes un-performed. That's abominable enough, and that's what we should talk about, not the (false) specter of non-treatment.

> "They just get it later, via the ED, after prevention goes un-performed. That's abominable enough, and that's what we should talk about"

You two aren't disagreeing.

You say we should talk about the epidemic of people unable to afford primary care, pushing treatment later and later, eventually into the ER where they may not even be able to be saved - and even if they do, suffer long-term health effects due to the delay in treatment.

And he's saying that this is because the system does refuse to treat people - especially at the primary care level.

These two topics seem to line up just fine.

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