BBC on problems with British health services

This is why turning health care into a large government bureaucracy can be a serious issue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12964360

 

I realize I will sound both crass and like a blind loyalist* when I say this, but knee and hip replacement surgeries are not life-saving procedures. They're just not. They're life-altering, to be sure, and it sucks out loud that people are having to wait for them. But you do not die from having to wait six months for a new hip.

And if you want the new hip right now, there's private medical insurance here just like there is there. The only difference is that there, if you don't have private medical insurance, you don't get a new hip. Not now, not in six months, not ever.

So your implicit argument here is flawed: The existence of problems in a different system of health care does not, by definition, make your system better.

*-It's like Animal House. We don't like when other people make fun of the NHS. It's our pledge, and only we're allowed to do that to our pledges.

 

Just cancel coverage for everyone over 65 in 10 years.

Should work great.

 

I know what you are saying, Desk, but if it were my mother or wife that needed that hip replacement, and they were living in real pain, it would be very hard to sit back and watch them suffer. This is why, I think, the law passed by Obama is not good enough. It was a big giveaway to Big Pharma and the Insurance companies and did not really do anything to solve the problem (now that we are finding out what is in it). I would like for everyone to take a deep breath and start over, work on it together this time and get something positiv done...instead of this huge war we went through where both sides were more worried about winning the issue than fixing the problem.

 

I've said it before. Had both sides been willing to hammer out a good deal, everyone would have won. There are aspects of the health insurance lobby that were so indefensible, even the GOP would have been willing to change (pre-existing conditions, etc.)

Instead, you kept hearing about "Death Panels!" and "Taking away our freedom!", which made the Dems dig in just as much.

 

Baron, both sides were to blame. I am a conservative, you are a liberal. There are two sides here. Maybe can you put away the "Dems just do bad things when they have to respond to those evil Republicans" thought process for a second? Yes, the Republicans were not cooperative. However, they were not even given a seat at the table until the summit in DC. The law was written without Republican input, true, but that was not by choice of the Republicans. Both sides acted improperly and it would be nice if both sides could admit it.

 

Usually an opposition party makes a counterproposal and files its own legislation, and works with the powers that be to get it passed or see its ideas included in the successful bill.

Instead we get the GOP whining about how it had no input, when it refused to participate in the debate from Day 1.

 

Health care is the same in every first-world country, it's rationed. In the U.S., the insurance companies ration care with limits and pre-authorization. In Canada and the U.K., it's long wait times for MRIs and joint replacement surgery.

 

The GOP was in power from 2001-2006. They could have made their own health care reforms. They chose not to, even with the issues that they, themselves, may have found repugnant.

It took the Dems to pass any type of health care reform. To the GOP, they limited their reforms to making it harder for people to declare bankruptcy, even though the majority of people do so because they have a health crisis. That was health care reform to them.

 

Exactly. It's a government beaurcracy or a corporate beaurcracy. Pick your poison.

 

Trust me, I am fine with your pointing out how the Republicans did nothing when they were in power...they should have. However, the "pass anything" mindset is how we got this abomination of a law. I really doubt the constitutionality, but that's neither here nor there. What needs to happen now is that both sides, BOTH sides, need to get over themselves and quit trying to "win" the issue. They need to work together to fix health care because what we ended up with, what the President signed into law, makes matters worse and the majority of Americans do not want it.
And Wicked, if you think just the GOP was to blame about the process and what happened you are unable to look at things with an open mind. Plain and simple, both sides were more worried about the fight and not about getting things done to the satisfaction of the American people. The Dems were not innocent in any way, shape or form. Neither side was. I can admit that...can you?

 

Sure, Carlton, I can.

Here's the thing, though: Obama made it known when he was running for office that health-care reform was his top concern.

Republicans, in their effort to control the message, only said "no, no, no!"

That backfired and let Obama set the narrative.

The GOP's half-hearted efforts late to offer some form of reform was CYA at its best.