The NHS is not as wonderful as some people crack it up to be.
It is hideously wasteful of resources and has a massive bureaucracy.
A privately-run medical setup would be much more efficient.
The NHS is quite good at providing low-level routine care and also if you have something really serious wrong with you.
Where it tends to fail is in the non-urgent cases that require attention.
For example, a friend of mine had to have his gall bladder out because the gall stones kept blocking the ducts and making him ill. He had two choices - wait four or five months for a NHS operation or pay £4000 and get it done the following week. He paid up.
Thanks for this perspective, I know very little about a normal health care system let alone a national one. It's obviously not a topic I've researched or written on, although I added a page for it at the ACL in 2003 always hoping I'd find the time to fill it in.
I am opposed to national healthcare in principle because it circumvents what I think is our birthright to self diagnose help, self medicate and to use every option the planet has to offer. Surgical procedures like planned C-sections for the convienence of a doctor's schedule totally freaks me out. The whole idea of a medical "establishment" bothers me, and I suspect their motives the same way I suspect all communitarian program providers. The last thing I could deal with would be compulsory medical treatment, and I will never call 911 as long as I live, and I don't carry a GPS when I go in the backcountry either.
I think hospitals are houses of death run by witchdoctors, so it was a bit weird to see access to their "care" described as the height of communitarian justice. Not that your friend didn't need help with his gallstones, but wow what a price he paid for it. As broke as I am I'd have to suffer it out while I tried to find an alternative remedy from one of my many herbal expert friends. I trust the pagan earth mamas a lot more than I trust the guys with the knives.
The AMA is little more than a crime syndicate, as is Big Pharma, and now the entire U.S. government.
Your gut instinct about the average American hospital - along with its pampered medical experts - is right on, Niki!
How these "good doctors" and "healthcare administrators" can go along for the ride... despite what they must eventually learn about the corrupted system that sustains them... is symptomatic of all that ails this country.
I'm so glad my parents aren't alive to witness this sad, sad time in our nation's history. Being an "American" was the last label I'd still accepted as part of my identity - now I wonder how much I've contributed personally to this country's demise.
I wonder too if these over-educated [indoctrinated; brainwashed] idiots are having just too much fun living the good life to see how accepting counterfeit money [and numerous pats on the back] for their contributions to society has actually only enslaved them... to a bunch of con artists, grifters, and gangsters... pretty much like most everybody else.
The NHS is not as wonderful as some people crack it up to be.
ReplyDeleteIt is hideously wasteful of resources and has a massive bureaucracy.
A privately-run medical setup would be much more efficient.
The NHS is quite good at providing low-level routine care and also if you have something really serious wrong with you.
Where it tends to fail is in the non-urgent cases that require attention.
For example, a friend of mine had to have his gall bladder out because the gall stones kept blocking the ducts and making him ill. He had two choices - wait four or five months for a NHS operation or pay £4000 and get it done the following week. He paid up.
Thanks for this perspective, I know very little about a normal health care system let alone a national one. It's obviously not a topic I've researched or written on, although I added a page for it at the ACL in 2003 always hoping I'd find the time to fill it in.
ReplyDeleteI am opposed to national healthcare in principle because it circumvents what I think is our birthright to self diagnose help, self medicate and to use every option the planet has to offer. Surgical procedures like planned C-sections for the convienence of a doctor's schedule totally freaks me out. The whole idea of a medical "establishment" bothers me, and I suspect their motives the same way I suspect all communitarian program providers. The last thing I could deal with would be compulsory medical treatment, and I will never call 911 as long as I live, and I don't carry a GPS when I go in the backcountry either.
I think hospitals are houses of death run by witchdoctors, so it was a bit weird to see access to their "care" described as the height of communitarian justice. Not that your friend didn't need help with his gallstones, but wow what a price he paid for it. As broke as I am I'd have to suffer it out while I tried to find an alternative remedy from one of my many herbal expert friends. I trust the pagan earth mamas a lot more than I trust the guys with the knives.
The AMA is little more than a crime syndicate, as is Big Pharma, and now the entire U.S. government.
ReplyDeleteYour gut instinct about the average American hospital - along with its pampered medical experts - is right on, Niki!
How these "good doctors" and "healthcare administrators" can go along for the ride... despite what they must eventually learn about the corrupted system that sustains them... is symptomatic of all that ails this country.
I'm so glad my parents aren't alive to witness this sad, sad time in our nation's history. Being an "American" was the last label I'd still accepted as part of my identity - now I wonder how much I've contributed personally to this country's demise.
I wonder too if these over-educated [indoctrinated; brainwashed] idiots are having just too much fun living the good life to see how accepting counterfeit money [and numerous pats on the back] for their contributions to society has actually only enslaved them... to a bunch of con artists, grifters, and gangsters... pretty much like most everybody else.