I Was Treated to a Foreign First World Public Health Care System
Last Friday I learned what it was like to be part of a civilized, first world health system.
I was in England, staying at my godmother's house, when I got slammed by one of my chronic migraines. When I get migraines I usually resign myself to a dark room, take my medication and wait for the nauseating pain and blurry vision in my left eye to dissipate.
As I rummaged around my suitcase to find my salvation, high doses of Trexamet and Naprosyn, I discovered that I had forgot to pack them in my rush to the airport. Not having my medication doesn't mean enduring one bad headache. It means enduring about three days of completely crippling head pain. Instead of panicking over my fate, I picked up the phone and called my doctor in NY. I thought she'd be able to call in a prescription. No dice. She actually didn't even call me back. Plus, as my godmother reminded me, she wouldn't be able to call in a prescription because she's not part of the British health system.
So I resigned myself back to my dark room, put a cloth over my head and tried to do what my mother always tells me: "go to another place." Well, my godmother came upstairs shortly afterward and suggested that she could take me to that other place... a National Health office.
Since I thought getting an appointment there would require a referral, at least a day's wait and an exorbitant amount of money, I told her not to bother. She called anyways, got me an appointment for the next hour and we were off to the neighborhood clinic.
It was amazing. I filled out paperwork with my New York address, waited five minutes, met with the doctor, got a prescription, walked downstairs to the pharmacy under the clinic and was back at my godmother's house an hour later. Believe it or not, I didn't have to pay a cent for the visit. I did, however, pay a "private" prescription price for the medication that added up to about $30 dollars.
I'm not denying that there are problems with the British system. My problem wasn't life threatening, but it was temporarily crippling. For people with deadly diseases like cancer there are documented frustrations over access to certain treatment. My great-uncle actually got sent home from a British hospital because there weren't enough beds that day. He was scheduled for open heart surgery... an operation he endured the following week.
There will always be problems in a system that takes care of millions, but that shouldn't preclude us from not giving millions their rights to proper health care. What Obama said about energy applies to health care: "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." From my experience the British system was good. It was also good to my great-uncle. Even though he was sent home, he was treated. His immediate family didn't have to haggle with insurers or cut costs. His country took care of him. America should be able to do the same.
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Where Congress Stands
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Here is an interesting though experiment. Ask yourself this: "If I could end poverty and hunger in America by agreeing to an income maximum, would I do it? If I would, what maximum would I agree to, and why?" Keeping in mind that health is a true national treasure and healthcare a true security need, ask yourself this: "How much would I pay to make my country stronger and safer?"
I love to tell Americans this story about my Canadian experience.
My 50th birthday & I got a greeting from British Columbia “Happy Birthday! We invite you to celebrate with a mammogram!” I called and got an appointment right away.
I had a 1:30pm appointment. By 1:48pm, I had my mammogram and was outta there!
Days later I got a nice letter saying everything was okay, they sent the results to my family doctor, and “tell your friends.”
Just great!
They invest well in preventive care, and efficiently too. No need for an MD to determine it is my birthday and I’m due for a mammogram, you just need a calendar for that!
Cancer outcomes are better in Canada. Good preventive care and early detection is part of the picture.
The service could not have been more professional, competent, timely and NICE! How great to make preventive care a celebration of my birthday, my health and my life!
I had immigrated to Canada from the States in early 2005 and was remembering when I’d had a mammogram last, only one in the 6 years before moving. I had to insist, get my GYN to refer me and it was still a drama! They don’t care about prevention in the US because if you get cancer they’re just going to try to find a way to dump you and / or make you pay out of your pocket.
I’ll take my Canadian celebration of care any day.
Great story! My experience of the Italian Health Care system is a carbon copy of yours. C'mon USA if poor, messed up Italy can pull it off so can you.
I too, am becoming somewhat disillusioned with Obama's ability to "get things done" in Washington as well. He had a resounding mandate of the American people which in my opinon, he has already spent by foot dragging, compromise, and politics as usual. I honestly believe that if we don't get health care reform NOW, we will NEVER get it until things reach the disaster level of 9/11 and politicians and the health care industry are forced to deal with the problem.. As Winston Churchill once said; "American will try every alternative available to them but in the end, they'll do the right thing. A day of reckoning is coming for most Americans on rising health care costs sooner than most think.
Congress has the responsibility of creating the law. Obama signs. Bill and Hillary Clinton tried it the other way around and failed miserably. Everyone knows the agenda. And what exactly has he been dragging his foot on? He's been in office for 6 months. (And PLEASE don't say DADT and DOMA - that's another whole rant on my part.) One man can't change an entire country or political system in SIX MONTHS! He didn't show up with a freakin' magic wand.
We already have good bills on health care:
Sen. Sanders S.703
Rep. Conyers HR 676
So with good bills out there, what is needed is leadership and support in the house and the senate and the white house.
And off topic, but there is a bill to repeal don't ask don't tell as well:
The Military Readiness Enhancement Act H.R. 1283
http://www
A+
The only one that can force real health care reform to happen is Barack Obama For some reason he seems to be hiding out on this and all the other promises he made. If we don't get the health care we need, it's Obama's fault and his alone.
I find myself losing my belief in his ability to get things done. Never thought I would feel or say that.
It sounds like he's doing a lot of work behind the scenes. He's giving Congress a chance because he wants a bipartisan bill, but you can sense his frustration with the process, especially when it's clear that 70% of the populace supports some kind of public system.
Frankly , if ANYONE is HIDING, it is the AMERICAN PEOPLE who should be making sure THEIR ELECTED REPS FIRMLY UNDERSTAND WHAT WE < THE PEOPLE WANT ...Obama is WILLING, it the ELECTED REPS WHO ARE DRAGGING THIS INTO ANOTHER ABYSMAL MORASSE WITH NO SOLUTION TO SERVE US !!
The nonsense that tis but Obama, IS RIDICULOUS, check out YOUR ELECTED REP, demand HE/SHE do the WILL OF THE PEOPLE and if NOTHING ELSE>..HAV
You can treated like that in Canada too
I've received excellent and timely care twice while visiting England. My mother was treated 3 times during her 3 visits. The care couldn't have been better, the staff more caring, and the absence of any charges more astounding. Everyone knows that their excellent system has been starved since the Thatcher government but they are making real effort to restore it and even in it's current state, few would give it up.
Americans are simply incapable of fully realizing what it would mean not to have the worry about medical bills or whether they have the money to see a doctor. I really don't think we can fully comprehend it. I have an incredibly beautiful new marble hospital within a mile of me. It even has a grand piano in the lobby. I can't afford to be treated there. Is this what we are willing to devote our lives to? Do marble halls and grand pianos keep us from getting cancer and give us a life without the crushing worry over cost?? The public option is a paltry trade off for anything like a single payer.
Please, lets don't end up on the other side of this and accept another 5 to 10 years of this abuse.
I just watched Bill Moyer's friday show
http://www
July 10, 2009
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
[The biggest medical drama on our TV screens this summer is not reruns of "House" or "Grey's Anatomy." It's a high stakes, life and death spectacle inside and outside the halls of Congress, as lawmakers attempt open heart surgery on that most fragile and stubborn of patients — health care reform. ]
The exploitation of the system for profit is brutal and extremely depressing. I am so grateful I am Canadian and never have to worry about health care access or being bankrupted by a medical emergency.
The point I wish to make is in the US system the "shareholders" are the rich and powerful hedge funds, pension funds, rich individuals and so on who invest in health insurance companies. They demand high returns and will punish any insurance company for not meeting their expectations each quarter. The health and well being of the people they insure is not their concern. It seems to me that a quick and easy way to improve US health care delivery efficiency is to ban these shareholders, or at least limiting the amount of equity they can hold, from investing in the health care industry or in any public good sector.
Bill Moyers is so great. Here is another good program:
http://www
Agree with a lot of your sentiment, but towards the end you get a bit off track: "... ban these shareholders ... from investing in the health care industry ".
If you want to get wet, you can't just go to the edge of the diving board and stand there. You have to jump in (my analogy about health care reform) - Private health insurance companies need to be COMPLETELY taken out of the equation. At least as far as controlling the system, indeed having the system - and the American people - by its throat. (Even with a true single-payer system there would still be a few private insurance companies that the rich and powerful would use to get their gold-plated care - the same way they do now.)
You mean it's possible to have health care without having to go through insurance company business men who just want your money?!
Insurance Companies == legal organized crime
Watching the Wendell Potter interview, and the way he describes how things work, it becomes so obvious that that is indeed a completely accurate analogy.
People who have your health and life in their hands, and not only not care, but who base their behavior and decisions solely on making the most money, regardless of whether people suffer and die. AND pay off the system (our political institutions and politicians) to enable them to continue doing it.
$75 for an aspirin to be delivered to a patient in a hospital..
If the US really wants one of those kinds of health care system where it's cheap, it's simple, all they have to do is figure out how to get it while paying-off the guys that have paid good money to create legislation that makes wealthy parasitic political contributors part of the solution. See the connection? The contributions from those who have everything to gain from the status quo or from a system that, for the good of all, requires somebody to let that money run through their clutching fingers. Ironically the media is not pointing this out cuz they are the ones on which the political contributions are spent buying lucrative political ads...mayb
We’ll have to change more than the party in the control of the congress and the white house to make the government service the people! And we have a right to "alter or abolish" our government if it is not serving us. We have a right to a constitutional convention as well.
I’d recommend:
Public Campaign Financing: take corporations and groups like the NRA out of the campaign finance business. See http://cha
Outlaw lobbying, period.
Reform media: Require some real news for use of the public air waves rather than non-stop corporate propaganda that urges people to act against their own interests.
Universal suffrage: so that the right cannot disenfranchise those likely to disagree with them (average citizens). And count every vote, including absentee and military votes.
Voting reform: We need verifiable paper ballots. If they can’t brain wash with their propaganda and disenfranchise people, they’ll steal the election directly.
Change Election Day: voting should be on a weekend day/s and that day should be a national holiday.
Direct elections: do away with the Electoral College. Only direct elections are internationally monitored, so this would mean our elections could be monitored too.
Stop gerrymandering: we need some legitimate and fair way to adjust districts based on population changes that cannot be corrupted by either side.
All excellent ideas.
If only... It makes me so sad to know that most likely, none of us alive today (even if you're one freakin' year old) will ever live to see all of these things happen.
This happen to a neighbor of mine here in the US. She had just switched her private health insurance ($300 a month her cost alone) and was told she couldn't get an appointment with a doctor for at least three days - Her only options where Emergency or Urgent Care.
Because her plan stated without permission from her health care provider she couldn't go to the Emergency Room unless she paid for the whole thing out of pocket ($500 just to walk in the door) Urgent Care would have cost $250+.
If she had a Private Health Care Provider her Emergency Rome cost would have been $150+ and Urgent Care $135+ out of pocket.
In the end she went to a local non for profit Free Clinic (based on income) she waited 45 min as a non-appointment urgent patient and based on her income paid $45 for the doctor and tests and $3.00 for the generic medication.
30 days later she was finally able to get an appointment with her new Private Primary Care Physician, she waited 2 hours in his office and saw him for 10 minutes. Her co-pay was $30, the prescription cost was $80.
So even in the US Health Care based on income is better than private insurance.
more…
Don't think people in the US who need surgery aren't sent home because of conflicts and over bookings or the fact that many do have to wait weeks sometimes months for a procedure even with private insurance. It happens all the time, depends where you live and what the hospitals offer which depends on what the community is willing to support.
Also, the UK example happens in the US with Private Health Care, they will not pay for a number of drugs and certain procedures, especially with cancers.
But this is the USA!, USA!, USA! we should have better than the Europeans, right?
We are better at everything regardless of cost, right?
Why not the best for all?
And anyone who says the reasons costs are high due to R&D– 80% of R&D is done on the government dollar, your taxed dollar at the university level, including clinical trials and a good number of those companies gleaning the outcomes are HQed in the EU.
The provisions in the law, lobbied by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, allow these private entities free assess with closed patents to what has been created on the public dollar.
Pure profit.
That has to end.
People, start digging into your government and the influence these giant for profit corporations have over it.
It's criminal that your loved one has to die or suffer so that some no-face-non-human corporation can profit by denying them proper life saving care.
That's barbaric!
Why is that MSM only focuses on the worst cases of nationalized medicine? You know the stories I am talking about: the Canadian woman who has to get her MRI in the states, the European man who has to have a complicated surgery in New York because of a waiting list in France, Italy, Portugal - pick your country. Why do we not hear the predominately good stories? And I do acknowledge that it works both ways. Most Europeans and Canadians only hear of the disasters of our health care system, not the successes. Let's face it, in the United States if you work for the government or a Fortune 500 company, you and your family get good care without costing 50% or more of your salary.
"Let's face it, in the United States if you work for the government or a Fortune 500 company, you and your family get good care without costing 50% or more of your salary."
ummm... And just what is the percentage of the American people who fall into those two categories? (i.e., not that big).
So the remainder of us have to put up with what for the majority of us is a dysfunctional system but just because "if you work for the government or a Fortune 500 company" you're OK?
Scratching my head...
that comment should be amended to read "top executive at a fortune 500 company." many of the rank and file still pay a huge chunk of their salary for their medical insurance, and many will get fired if they ever need it for a serious illness.
...serious
I was in England last fall and had a carry on bag with my medications stolen. I was advised to go to the A&E (equivalent of our emergency dept) at a local hospital near Heathrow. I waited less than an hour and was seen by a lovely doctor. I explained my situation. He did make an emergency call to my Dr. in the USA to confirm that I was, indeed, prescribed these medications (a smart move, which I appreciated). He then wrote me out a prescription, enough to cover the remainder of my 2 week holiday. When I walked out of his office, I asked where the billing department was. He told me, oh, there's no charge! I then went to the chemist (pharmacist) who charged me all of $6 for my medication. If I had been part of the NHS, my medications would have been free.
I love the black British couple in the movie SICKO bringing their new baby home from the hospital and when Michael Moore asks them how much they had to pay, they both laugh out loud and say "this isn't America" - that says it all...
I had both my babies in Germany while living/working there and paying into the health system. Same story. The bill for my fist baby was a matter of paying for the telephone in my room withan 8- day (!) standard care stay for a caesarian section. It was something like 24 German Marks at the time. With the second baby, no telephone, and I went to the checkout desk, thinking I would have to pay something. They said "What were you here for, a baby? Goodbye!" not one blessed cent extra. I DID have to pay a total of 30€ for my gynecologist for the entire pregnancy: the docs take ten euros per quartal, regarless of how many visits you make.
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