Monday, June 13, 2011

Great Britain Fears American-Style Health Care: Americans have the most expensive public-private health care in the world and, if you lose your job or find your health care insurance premiums rise 15-20 percent a year, as they do, one of the most treacherous. It's a system where many companies hope to profit from illness, where doctors charge for an abundance of tests out of greed or for fear they will be sued for malpractice. It's a system where the pharmacutical companies and the hospital combines make lavish profits and conservative politicians scream "socialism!" and "death panels!" if a President or a governor tries to reform the system even halfway towards what the rest of the modern nation-states take almost for granted in health security. It leaves millions of people up at night worried that they might get sick and they might be under-insured or uninsured. It's that long national nightmare to people whose recession- threatened jobs are directly tied to health care insurance. On top of that, our hodge-podge system, which only seems to serve those lucky enough to have a good private health care package in corporate or government service, is not a big-seller abroad. Take Great Britain's current social debates: It would appear that no matter what the reforms versus the reactionary backlash over health care in America will be on these shores , the people of the UK will not stand for any party leaders, including their Conservative Prime Minister, endorsing anything close to what we have here that passes for a health care system. http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fg-britain-health-care-20110613,0,1237142.story

18 comments:

  1. Thanks Doug - the LA Times article was very interesting... and funnily enough I'd just finished commenting on Neil's article on the debate in the UK (http://nomadtraveller.multiply.com/journal/item/1506/FREE_TO_CHEWS)

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  2. Doug I'm afraid we live in a country almost totally controlled by insurance co's banks and wall street and they care nothing about the people who can't afford to buy health insurance from them.
    Perhaps the countries who see our government as mobsters know more about our government than we do.

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  3. Basically the US doesn't have Health Care - They have Health Consumerism. Our flash government would like to see that here also - they try to present it (and other exploitative concepts) as giving people choices!

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  4. Thanks for sending me that link Ian.

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  5. Well put Mike. I beginning to think we are more like the modern Russian Republic of kleptocrats than our western European neighbors, Mike.

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  6. And giving tax cuts and big dividends to their rich pals in the private sector. Yeah that's the problem with health care in the States---big business got in there and now they want to turn even our medical system (Medicare) for older folks into a voucher deal. With more choices!!!!


    What a crock! Tell the neighbors to resist the conservatives, Iri Ani--they are the trojan horses for the American Medical Establishment.

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  7. I've been using the US model of healthcare as an example of what not to do for years. It's true that the UK NHS needs some work done on it but the basic model works, if it ain't broke don't fix it is my view.

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  8. Put another way, Jim: better to knock off radically rebuilding an already useful house and focus on protecting the framework you already have.

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  9. Indeed.
    You may be forgiven for thinking that our PM 'Dave' Cameron would be kindly disposed towards the NHS given that his family made great use of it to care for his late son. And I do believe he does have a lot of empathy for it, but as the leader of a right wing party he'll never be able to carry the rest of his people on the issue. Or to put that another way the Tories, like the leopard, cannot change their spots!

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  10. Yes, saving money for millionaires on their taxes above all else is inbred in our "Tories" (Republicans and right-leaning Democrats) over here as well, Jim. Things are so balled up here in the Land of the Free I don't follow British or other transnational domestic politics property as I used to.

    These birds see a government budget problem and go right to trying to take away from regular folks any programs they can't as a party take credit for. 'Dave" Cameron's private family history probably is an exceptional case among that crowd.

    It helped over here that Obama's late mother was fighting some big insurance outfit over her health care costs during her final illness from cancer years ago. The extra hardships that Ann Obama went through had an impact on her son's psyche, otherwise the Affordable Care Act might would have been even more compromised.

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  11. The simple matter is that we will not allow these IMF Con-Dem patsies dismantle health and welfare system as demanded by their overseers.

    Cameron has been forced into a major U-Turn on government plans to destroy the NHS. This however is the beginning, rather than the end of the growing backlash against these IMF wish-list cuts.

    I myself have recently voted in a ballot to take strike action and look forward to a devastating Summer of industrial mayhem, unleashed by the comrades in concert with the wider resistance movement across the EU and beyond.

    We have already arm wrestled Cameron to the ground, but now it is time for some serious kicking to start. Back in March the trade union movement could put more than half a million activists on a wet Saturday afternoon in Westminster. Purely in numbers terms there is no competition, no other organisation can hold a candle to the green red alliance, organised labour and responsible consumers who are going to hurt the IMF and their employees like David Cameron and Nick Clegg will reap the whirlwind..

    This sleazy bunch of banker's molls that were never elected to be the British government and who have no mandate from the British people have today announced that they are going to take benefits from cancer patients to give George Osborne an extra pot of Beluga to slurp with his piggish pals the scum of Greater Bilderbergia, the very public school psychopaths we are currently plotting to emasculate.

    So hold onto your hats folks, here we go, here we go, here we go......!

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  12. we also have our military medical system which works very well thank you--have been using it for 30yrs. and still no problem

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  13. Doug the title of the story is about England fearing the American health care. But this is where America has feared any change as well. Perhaps health care is something that is sufficed for some. However, there is and has been a tremendous boom, as you know that globally within all countries there is something, which can or does need attention.

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  14. Sounds like the sort of left-organizational power that would be well emulated in other nations, AA.

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  15. Yes, its too bad Medicare wasn't expanded I think Heidi, or any system like the military has where they directly negoiate prices for drugs and directly runb the hospitals. Alas, big business has its hooks too deep into the American system for that.

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  16. It'sa good point Jack. Change is always hard to bring about. Just as fear spreads more quickly than a reasoned argument. (Especially when there are special iinterests at work performing the fright.)

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  17. It is all over Europe Doug, massive forces of resistance in Greece, Spain and Portugal like those in the UK, have been mostly airbrushed out of the mainstream Anglophone news channels over the past couple of weeks, a lot is happening and there is much more to come.

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  18. You're right, AA. I have gathered some of this from what little is out there on the Internet and the Public Radio outlets. But,as you say, it is downplayed over here so far.

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