My experience so far with the British health care system

[Rastapopoulos]

I grew up in the rural Southwest of England (the nearest village was the quaintly named Langford Budville - it was a couple of miles away across fields). Once, when I had the flu bad, the doctor came out to our cottage. To do this he had to drive for half an hour, the last part of which was up an incredibly pitted unpaved road. Free!

Those were the days. Ironically, I later went to a Private (which in England is, confusingly, called "Public") School (also free - I got a scholarship) and was the only lefty there. (Why did my parents send me there? According to my Dad, because he was convinced that the newly-elected Tories would dismantle the state education system. So I got to learn Latin. Which I have since forgotten.) I was regularly told to "fuck off to Russia". But not one of the charmers who used to say that would have ever questioned the NHS. Even Maggie didn't dare fuck with it, so she settled on using North Sea Oil money to cripple the Miners.

 

[Rastapopoulos]

This is a great story, but have they discovered dental floss yet?

The reason we have crooked and stained teeth is because necessary dental care is free. (My two front teeth are fake because I broke them in two separate incidents as a kid. Ironically, they're the whitest teeth I have. Both free.) If you want cosmetic care, it costs money. So anyone could get it, and some do. But then some people get their anuses bleached as well. And besides, we don't smile, so it's not necessary.

 

[Denny Crane]

Clearly the definition has become so ridiculously broad as to be useless and Iinsulting.

How do you think they build new hospitals, expand, buy new equipment, and so on?

 

[maxiep]

The NHS is the third largest employer in the world after the Chinese Army and the Indian National Railway. China has approximately 1.3B people, India has approximately 1.0B and the UK has a little over 40MM people. We have 315MM. How big and bureaucratic will our system be?

Also, the UK outsources most of its defense to us so it can pay for a system where its breast cancer survival rate is 74%, when it's over 90% in the US. To whom will we outsource our defense to protect us from an expansionist Russia and China?

 

[maxiep]

The reason we have crooked and stained teeth is because necessary dental care is free. (My two front teeth are fake because I broke them in two separate incidents as a kid. Ironically, they're the whitest teeth I have. Both free.) If you want cosmetic care, it costs money. So anyone could get it, and some do. But then some people get their anuses bleached as well. And besides, we don't smile, so it's not necessary.

You seem to be comfortable with others deciding what is necessary. Remember, a government that can do everything for you can do anything to you.

 

[MARIS61]

How do you think they build new hospitals, expand, buy new equipment, and so on?

From their budget for operations and maintenance, just like WalMart does.

Did you skip Business 101 in Jr High, or are you just being obtuse?

 

[MARIS61]

You seem to be comfortable with others deciding what is necessary. Remember, a government that can do everything for you can do anything to you.

By that measure, he's safe, since they can't straighten his teeth for free under current law.

 

[mook]

The NHS is the third largest employer in the world after the Chinese Army and the Indian National Railway. China has approximately 1.3B people, India has approximately 1.0B and the UK has a little over 40MM people. We have 315MM. How big and bureaucratic will our system be?

The UK population is actually about 50% bigger than you think. 63 million.

Also, the UK outsources most of its defense to us so it can pay for a system where its breast cancer survival rate is 74%, when it's over 90% in the US. To whom will we outsource our defense to protect us from an expansionist Russia and China?

UK spends about 2.3% of gdp on military. US spends 3.8%.
UK spends about 9.6% of gdp on health care. US spends 18%.

It's hard to see how the US military spending subsidizes UK health care spending from those numbers. Seems to me that the UK just spends less on both, and a lot less on health care.

It's fun to pick out individual illnesses and point to that as proof of systemic problems, but something like "breast cancer survival rates" are not necessarily apples-to-apples comparisons across countries. If you have a link to the actual study, it'd be interesting to read.

Anyway, the point of this thread is that my entire life I've heard from conservatives, "You have no idea how good we have it! You think this is bad, you should just see how much it sucks over there!" (Many of these people, incidentally, didn't own a passport.) Since statistics don't seem to budge the conversation, I thought I'd post my personal experience of what I've personally seen in the past few months. It's just one guy's anecdotal evidence, but based on what I've heard my whole life growing up in Idaho, one would expect a different experience.

 

[MARIS61]

The NHS is the third largest employer in the world after the Chinese Army and the Indian National Railway. China has approximately 1.3B people, India has approximately 1.0B and the UK has a little over 40MM people. We have 315MM. How big and bureaucratic will our system be?

Also, the UK outsources most of its defense to us so it can pay for a system where its breast cancer survival rate is 74%, when it's over 90% in the US. To whom will we outsource our defense to protect us from an expansionist Russia and China?

You're forgetting the US Defense Dept, largest employer in the world by far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

Also, environment, heredity, attitude and lifestyle are all factors in survival rates of breast cancer as well as in general health.

 

[maxiep]

The UK population is actually about 50% bigger than you think. 63 million.



UK spends about 2.3% of gdp on military. US spends 3.8%.
UK spends about 9.6% of gdp on health care. US spends 18%.

It's hard to see how the US military spending subsidizes UK health care spending from those numbers. Seems to me that the UK just spends less on both, and a lot less on health care.

It's fun to pick out individual illnesses and point to that as proof of systemic problems, but something like "breast cancer survival rates" are not necessarily apples-to-apples comparisons across countries. If you have a link to the actual study, it'd be interesting to read.

Anyway, the point of this thread is that my entire life I've heard from conservatives, "You have no idea how good we have it! You think this is bad, you should just see how much it sucks over there!" (Many of these people, incidentally, didn't own a passport.) Since statistics don't seem to budge the conversation, I thought I'd post my personal experience of what I've personally seen in the past few months. It's just one guy's anecdotal evidence, but based on what I've heard my whole life growing up in Idaho, one would expect a different experience.

The US GDP is almost $17T
The UK GDP is less than $3T

You can talk percentages all you wish but as long as the UK's GDP is roughly 17% of the US', then you can't compare the UK's defense numbers and ours.

Clearly we spend more on health care. We also receive a superior product.

 

[maxiep]

You're forgetting the US Defense Dept, largest employer in the world by far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

Also, environment, heredity, attitude and lifestyle are all factors in survival rates of breast cancer as well as in general health.

By those numbers, our health system would grow to 8.5MM people.

Do you really think people in the UK are more susceptible to dying from breast cancer? It's not like it's a homogenous society.

 

[mook]

Their population is 20% of the US. The GDP is 17% of the US. Seems pretty comparable to me. Not a perfect comparison, but pretty close, given our similar cultural, political and economic systems.

Anyway, if we receive a superior product in the US, why was my own experience the exact opposite of that? Re-read what I wrote. I personally experienced an emergency life-threatening situation for my son, and I was pretty satisfied with how it was handled.

I have a friend in the US who is a physician, and he told me based on the symptoms I described they most likely would have operated on him in the US, just because of liability issues and it was good business to (I had insurance in the US, and more surgery = more money for hospital). They didn't operate on my son here because the doctor correctly diagnosed that it wasn't appendicitis, so my son wasn't needlessly put under (scary for me to think about), and neither tax payers, insurers nor myself were needlessly billed for a wasteful operation. It's now been several months and no further symptoms have emerged. The English doctor was right.

Now my son probably isn't even categorized under "appendicitis survival rates" here in the UK, because nobody would bother logging what turned out to be a pulled abdominal muscle. Had the operation proceeded in the US, the health care system would pat itself on the back for a Very Successful Appendectomy, letting it notch up their appendicitis survival rates, all at the mere cost of $33,000.

Do you really think I would have been better off personally in the US health care system in this instance? Do you think the US would have better allocated health care dollars and resources than the UK did in this instance? Because I just don't see it.

 

[mook]

Do you really think people in the UK are more susceptible to dying from breast cancer? It's not like it's a homogenous society.

In the US, as I pointed out in my own example, there's a financial incentive to diagnose lots of people for something that isn't there, or might be there but be an exceedingly low probability. So if, say, you excise a completely benign tumor in a breast because there was a 1% likelihood it was cancerous, you could pat yourself on the back for a Very Successful Cancer Surgery when the patient survives.

Or if you are a doctor in England, you can shrug and say, "We kept an eye on it for a year and nothing bad happened, so it wasn't cancer. Nothing to report here."

The US has a 100% survival rate of breast cancer operations in this example. The UK has no evidence either way.

Now pretend there's a severely malignant tumor. In the UK or the US the doctor would operate, and sadly the patient dies. Going just on those two examples, in the UK the overall breast cancer survival rate is 0%, while in the US it's 50%. But it's really the same outcome--one patient lived, and one died.

This is just one of many ways these sort of statistics can be skewed.

 

[jlprk]

The US GDP is almost $17T
The UK GDP is less than $3T

You can talk percentages all you wish but as long as the UK's GDP is roughly 17% of the US', then you can't compare the UK's defense numbers and ours.

Clearly we spend more on health care. We also receive a superior product.

This is relevant only if Britain's population is about 100% of the U.S. Are you aware their population is not, and is in the neighborhood of 17% of ours? You validated his point without realizing it.

 

[jlprk]

My son sliced his index finger nearly all the way off yesterday and went to the emergency room in Salem.

He had to wait 6 hours before he saw anyone. After the wait his care was excellent.

Sorry to hear that, Maris. (The first sentence, not the last.)

 

[Denny Crane]

From their budget for operations and maintenance, just like WalMart does.

Did you skip Business 101 in Jr High, or are you just being obtuse?

You're the one that said they're somehow for profit because the name "non profit" has "become so ridiculously broad as to be useless and Iinsulting." (SIC)

 

[Denny Crane]

This is relevant only if Britain's population is about 100% of the U.S. Are you aware their population is not, and is in the neighborhood of 17% of ours? You validated his point without realizing it.

If only british fighter jets cost 17% of what ours cost, they'd be in good shape.

 

[maxiep]

If only british fighter jets cost 17% of what ours cost, they'd be in good shape.

Thank you. I was waiting for someone to figure it out. Our defense spending is actually a smaller percentage of GDP than it should be because of the size of our population. One would expect a certain minimum percentage figure, that declines with economies of scale.

Europe has financed their entire social welfare system on the backs of the US taxpayer.

 

[Denny Crane]

Thank you. I was waiting for someone to figure it out. Our defense spending is actually a smaller percentage of GDP than it should be because of the size of our population. One would expect a certain minimum percentage figure, that declines with economies of scale.

Europe has financed their entire social welfare system on the backs of the US taxpayer.

One only needs to look at NATO forces.

http://www.stripes.com/news/despite...or-most-of-world-s-military-spending-1.269882

Among NATO’s European members, only Estonia, Greece and Britain spent more than the alliance’s target sum of 2 percent of gross domestic product on their armed forces last year. The U.S. dedicated 4.1 percent of its GDP to defense, or $735 billion, according to the NATO data.

The combined defense expenditures of all NATO nations in 2013 amounted to $1.02 trillion. This figure includes research and development expenditures related to purchase of major equipment and pensions.