Socialized Medicine: The British View

[poliphilo]

We Brits love our NHS.

Many of us (including Professor Stephen Hawking) think we owe our lives to it.

Universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery- brilliant, eh?  No worries about keeping up with the payments, no women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they don't have the insurance, no-one suffering or dying because they can't afford the drugs.

Sure we have our complaints:  the NHS has been mismanaged, over-managed, underfunded- there are constant scandals and controversies- but no politician would dare suggest dismantling it- not even those on the far, far right.  The battle for socialized medicine was won in the 1940s- and now there's no British institution- not the monarchy, not the BBC, not the "mother of  parliaments"- that's more highly regarded or more firmly bedded in.

We understand you Americans are being offered a system of socialized medicine similar to ours and that some of you, instead of dancing around in your pyjamas and firing off skyrockets, are actually campaigning noisily against it. This surprises us. It fact it bewilders us.  If we didn't regard you Americans as cousins we'd be going "Foreigners, eh?" and doing that thing where you hold your forefinger level with your temple and twirl it round and round.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Re death panels: I believe the inflamers have picked up on the fact that some British National Health trusts have refused to buy very expensive new drugs for sufferers from terminal cancer. These drugs don't cure cancer, but are claimed to slow down its progress. These claims are disputed. The debate- as to whether it's worth the huge expenditure to keep very sick people alive for a few extra months- seems to me to be eminently worth having.

People are free to opt out of the National Health Service- and those who are rich enough can buy themselves any treatment they like. Most people are happy to stay inside the fold- even right-wing people. The Conservative leader- David Cameron- makes a point of using the NHS for himself and his family (even though he could afford private medicine) and gets political kudos for it.

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I've also seen the Dutch rules around Euthanasia put forward as evidence of socialist European death panels. Which misses the point, of course. (I *do* have some questions around how it is applied here but this does not have anything to do with rationing.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

At present Brits who want "assisted suicide" have to go to Switzerland to get it. This is allegedly illegal, but no-one has yet been prosecuted as an accomplice.

I don't have very clear views on the issue myself, but I'm glad that we're having the debate.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I have seen some of the results of life-prolonging drugs. All that they do is prolong suffering. If the patient wishes to discontinue such treatment, family members, overcome by guilt/compassion work on the patient to not "give up". In some cases, when a patient dies the family overrides the living will. They demand that resuscitation be administered, so that the sick person can suffer a little more in the hopes that a cure will be discovered during the interim.
There is such a thing as "quality of life" -- I opt for quality over quantity, and believe that there is a point at which the medical establishment ought to stop "selling" patients and their families on experimental treatments and/or "cures", and allow them to die with dignity.
Yes, I believe the time has come for a National Health Service in the USA. Why? Because for much of my young life I could not afford to seek medical or dental care due to the need to either pay up front or present evidence of insurance (which I could not afford). I have seen others delay medical care to the point where a simple problem escalated into a serious, life-threatening one.
"Health care, free at the point of delivery" -- Yes!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree about life-prolonging drugs. I don't want to live forever.

There may be cases where a person wants to live long enough to witness some important event- like a birth or a wedding- and I can see the point of dragging out the dying process- otherwise I'd have thought the best thing was to get it over with quickly.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

There's a sense in which all of us in the west have become detatched from death and believe it should not happen. But, I digress. What I was going to say is that healthcare is rationed everywhere. Yes, there are some things that NICE argues against in the UK (and NICE is odd because it doesn't take the cost of social care into account).

In America, people's insurance runs out at a certain point, or as is the case for 15% of the population, they've got no insurance at all. At least the British system has a greater degree of equity.

On my LJ I copied a very eloquent piece from todays' London Evening Standard, written by a Brit who has lived in the States. He's got it right, I think.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That article says it all.

I know, simply from reading my FL how much anxiety and suffering the US health system causes. The NHS isn't perfect, but it's so much more humane.