ker ching
But you know what?
Things suddenly feel a lot better when you whip out your plastic and buy yourself a one way flight to Ecuador.
Things suddenly feel a lot better when you whip out your plastic and buy yourself a one way flight to Ecuador.
posted by Lectrice at lunes, julio 31, 2006
2 Advice:
this isn't advice or anything, but does the bastard health service take plastic? thats scary that they control who can talk to a doctor. Can you pay doctors directly?
Maybe national health care for the US isn't such a great idea.
No. The private and public health systems are pretty far apart.
To run national health care, (and roads and all that other stuff) you pay about $500 a month from your wages while you're working. This means that you get let off the first $13 of any drug costs, and operations are free (in fact, all costs are free if you're not working, over 65, or a child).
And NHS costs are lowish - compare the $30 I pay for a public dentist to fail to sort out my teeth, to the $5000 it cost a private dentist to do the same thing, but correctly.
Unfortunately, the govt measures efficiency in really odd tickbox ways. So you can't get an appointment anywhere with a doctor, because once you've been promised an appointment, they have to deliver within a set time. The targets set are unrealistic, so the docs compensate by using receptionists and nurses to act as a formal initial guard. They let you see a doctor the same day (as long as you can wait two hours, or so, as they can't give you a time) only if you say it's an 'emergency'. You can only go to a practice within such and such a distance of your home. Practices can refuse to take on new patients at whim.
When you see a doc, you only get 5 minutes, maximum. If he needs to refer you to a specialist or a hospital, it's going to take around six months for an average referral.
All of these are procedures to protect the doctors from accountability measures that nobody can achieve. During the last election, a TV show audience member questioned Blair about the fact people cannot actually get health care any more, and the horrified look on his face was enough to convince me he had no idea about it. But the situation hasn't changed.
Few people have private healthcare (it's a company perk if you're in the top 15% of UK salaries, really). So they have to work the system by turning up at practises and hospital ERs pretending it's an emergency (average turnaround in an ER is 6 hours). This makes the system even harder for NHS professionals to meet their targets.
Have you seen the movie Brazil? That's what the NHS is like.
If I do get healthcare, it's frankly rather substandard compared to private healthcare in other countries. (Private healthcare in the UK isn't much better than NHS healthcare, and often takes place in NHS hospitals - but it doesn't have waiting lists on the same scale. You're paying for the doctor to see you, not for the doctor to cure you)
Alternatives are the two tier - private plus public health system they have in Aus, which is marvellous if you have money, but leaves the poor and underprivileged to rot.
Effectively, unless I pay for healthcare, I don't get healthcare, because of a loophole where I'm not a resident. It's not the fault of the NHS per se, but of the bureaucracy.
But the NHS will not and cannot exist without bureacracy.
And .. hell, doctors are mostly shit, anyway? What in hell have they learnt to cure since polio? :)
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