Has anyone listened to the Brits on socialized healthcare?

Question

When they talk about their EMS providers? Do Americans really want to go down this road?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ap46orYOB92Ts0OLWEJd8qHty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071123083646AATCvop&show=7#profile-info-AA12168740

My grandson waited 2 hours for an ambulance with suspected appendicitis (the emergency doctor, in my presence, had said on the phone to the ambulance service that he wanted the child in hospital within twenty minutes).

A few years ago I intervened in a street fight between two teenage girls - the loser was having her head battered on the pavement by the winner. I called 999; the police took an hour and 40 minutes to come; the ambulance never arrived at all.

My mother-in-law, following a fall, waited a long time for an ambulance, following which she was not seen in A & E for 8 (yes, EIGHT) hours - a long time for an old lady in pain from broken bones to wait sitting on a plastic chair in the waiting room.

There is a high degree dissatisfaction.

Hey Madlib

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html
Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain cli

lamplighter

Canadian newspapers are now filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care:

Vow broken on cancer wait times: most hospitals across canada fail to meet ottawa’s four-week guideline for radiation
Patients wait as p.e.t. scans used in animal experiments. Back patients waiting years for treatment.

Lamplighter here is another one.

Government researchers have provided the best data on the doctor shortage, noting, for example, that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12 percent of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.

Lamplighter one last one...lol

A man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion—he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren’t usually seen in the disorder—the man requested an MRI. The government told him that the wait would be four and a half months.

Answer 1

I am. The democrats want the vote of welfare bums. The way they will try to get it is to promise them "free" stuff. Anybody with an IQ of 67 knows that a system like Hillary's would destroy a pretty good system.

Answer 2

Pay no certainly not minds to that foolish speak. The NHS is first-class. They don't seem to be utilizing a whole syringe, the ones yanks, they believe we're 3rd international. Suffice it to mention even if utilizing the individual process, all of the difficult circumstances are referred again to the NHS and the individual hospitals pay the invoice. A little bit of a magic roundabout for idiots with extra money than genuine experience.

Answer 3

The United States should be trying to socialize the insurance only, not the entire system.

Your anecdotes are suspect. You wouldn't have an agenda, would you?

[ The performance of every Ambulance Trust is measured by the government, as part of a system called 'ORCON'.[13] The Governments targets are to reach 75% of Category A (life threatening) calls - as decided by the computerised AMPDS (except the Berkshire Division of South Central Ambulance where CBD (Criterion Based Dispatch) is used), within 8 minutes. A number of initiatives have been introduced to assist meeting these targets, including Rapid Responders and Community Responders. ]

Answer 4

LOL!! Funny!!

And none of it reflective of universal health care.

A friend of mine witnessed a little boy get run over, a few winters ago. The EMS was there in 90 seconds (someone called on a cell) and the cops a few seconds after that. The boy was at a hospital and in surgery within 5 minutes.

That was in Canada.

Wanna swap any more stories?

Edit:

Oh... the boy lived. :)

Ask any Canadian if they want to give up their Universal health care, and 99% of them will all give you the same answer; ...Not on your life. And in every country that has it, it's sacred. Like any system it encounters problems, but people rarely die because the coverage isn't broad enough or fast enough. But in the U.S., people die all the time because they don't have enough insurance to get what they need. And that includes many millions who "have" insurance... but not enough of it.

And then there's those who kill themselves worrying about impossibly large medical bills.

Those situations don't exist in countries that have Universal medical care.

And the same "waiting for treatment" happens in the states. the only thing that alleviates that in some centers is that the lines are shortened because people who should be in them are at home dying instead.

Answer 5

Too bad what is being proposed in America isn't Socialized healthcare or we would be concerned. However, what is being proposed by the Democrats, the Republicans have no plan at all, is AFFORDABLE health care. You would keep just what you have now and probably would be unable to tell the difference.

Unfortunately right wing propaganda harps on Socialized health care in the US because they don't give a whit about the elderly, children or the poor.

Answer 6

Yeah - the medical establishment then under socialized medicine will only be working 9-5, and not holidays or weekends. All the other times, it's whoever draws the shortest straw has to work - manning the skeleton crew shift

Answer 7

I could relate several horror anecdotes about health care service in the US also, so your stories aren’t very impressive.

I would imagine that the British are intelligent enough to reform or reject their system entirely, but since it has been in place since the 1940s, apparently they don’t want to.

Answer 8

Don't need to. I've listened to US military members who have been stationed in England, and they prefer Tricare of England's health care, and servicemen hate Tricare.

Answer 9

um where i live a friend of mind got shot,the ambulance showed up promtly 3 hours later after he died,and i live in american suposly the best country on earth,whats ur point?also a neighbor of mind has car wreck emt shows up an hour and half later he was doa

Answer 10

The "PROMISE" of socialized medicine is much different than the reality. Trouble is, most people don't deal well with reality. This is true of the left as well as the right. (The promise of war in Iraq is much better than the reality, too).