I'm currently in 'debate' with Americans who are denigrating the NHS and would appreciate some pointers towards factual statistics about waiting times, mortality rates, success rates etc.
can't as I'm having one of my 11 sick days, it sunny.
you are using facts in an argument with Americans ....school boy error
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Statistics/DH_554
Do their statistics include the 47 million without health insurance?
Off to listen to Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart again...
Been lurking on here for about three years, and this is topic anoying me enough to break cover.
Back to the OP, I'll ask my Dad and wife as they both work in the NHS.
their healthcare need not change.
do they think that there cleaners/ street sweepers and checkout boys deserve to get a tumor so big they carry it round in a wheelbarrow.
for a 'civilised' and christian (i know they are not officially) nation to leave the poorest out in the cold when they most need it is disgusting.
Ask them why out of all the G8 countries the US has the 2nd worse life expectancy - only Russia is worse
interesting comparison chart here
[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/12/nhs-us-healthcare-obama ]chart clicky[/url]
a lot more info if you click on the link above the chart
"DATA: download the full data on healthcare as a spreadsheet"
NHS workers
An oxymoron surely?
It's absolutely unbelievable how some Americans view the NHS.
According to them if you get a serious illness in the UK you die, it's as simple as that.
They cannot grasp the fact that no other developed Nation wants a Healthcare System like that of the US - they are defiantly convinced that US medicine is the best in the world, even if the majority of Americans cannot actually access that level of care.
I'm flabbergasted.. (always like that word! :lol:)
[url= http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/08/17/we-need-to-be-careful-when-comparing-us-and-uk-cancer-care/ ]Cancer Stats[/url]
We in the UK could do with improving nurse-patient ratios, though.
they are defiantly convinced that US medicine is the best in the world
Is that a mistake surely you meant
they are defiantly convinced that US is the best in the world
Can we have the forum link and we can all join in?
Don't know if these have already been done.
[url] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy [/url]
[url] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate [/url]
I wouldn't be surprised if the US does have the best health-care in the world, if you have money.
Problem is what if you don't have money? but that is only the hispanics and blacks, and a few hicks down south so who cares.
No statistics to hand alas. But then they are almost infinitely manipulable anyway. However I am fairly sure that the UK does [i]not[/i] have people who work in the insurance sector purely and exclusively to find reasons for health insurers to wriggle out of paying for life-saving treatment. I think the only answer to these people is for them to get ill and find out that some completely trivial observation (or rather 'undeclared risk') from their GP in their notes from 25 years ago means they will not get heart surgery and now its out of the bag no one else will insure them.
Here you go Junkyard - fill your boots with American provincialism...
http://www.topix.net/forum/us/politics/T9KBK18MIP6LC1TMI
(hope the bloody link works BTW)
I'm on there as 'John Lilburne' - a little conceit of mine!
There's a general feeling that US private healthcare is great but others would suggest that it uses expensive options for little gain and sometimes unnecessary treatment/investigation are performed bacause there's cash in it
Not really the sort of thing you can quantify
It *is* still true that many innovative & major recent advances come from them though
It *is* also true that the NHS is going to get VERY much more expensive in the near future if we stick with the same model
I'm currently in 'debate' with Americans who are denigrating the NHS ....
You're wasting your time mate.
If they are prepared to believe the NHS in Britain operates "death panels" to decide who may, and who may not live, as liars such as Sarah Palin tells them; or if they are prepared to believe our very own Dan Hannan - famous for calling Gordon Brown a "pathological liar", when he says that the NHS is a "60 year mistake"; then as Junkyard says, you are wasting your time presenting them with "facts".
[i]An oxymoron surely? [/i]
Opposed to yourself who's clearly just a moron.
Ernie -
definitely banging my head against the wall i admit.
It's that 'social' word again, it seems some Americans are deeply programmed to have the screaming hab-dabs when it is used.
When i pointed out that as a child i had over a dozen surgeries for CMT related problems that otherwise would have left me in a wheelchair rather than riding bicycles for fun, and that my parents would most likely have been forced into bankruptcy if we had to use the US system; i was told i was simply a leech sucking up the air of those who actually could contribute to society.
It seems it fails to occure to them that exactly because i received that treatment from the NHS i am now a productive and healthy member of society!
I wonder where Maggie got that idea about 'no such thing as society' from...?
However I am fairly sure that the UK does not have people who work in the insurance sector purely and exclusively to find reasons for health insurers to wriggle out of paying for life-saving treatment
Without those checks you'd have millions of people intentionally trying to defraud the insurers by deliberately failing to declare a pre-existing condition
that's a very black-and-white interpretation of what I said, Bob. Of course all insurers have their checks, loss adjustments and so on. Lord knows there is enough talk of it in terms of house/bike burglaries on here. I seem to remember you contributing significantly to a recent thread on here. My only advice can be to get some sort of serious debilitating illness and then see how much joy you get with your mortgage payment/life insurance, and your private medical insurance. Then imagine you live in the states and multiply that grief by lord knows how much... S'alright though, it'll never happen to you, eh?
In terms of medical insurance however, there is quite a gap betwen 'pre-existing condition' and 'I had a sore throat, I went to my GP and he told me not to worry about it'. And yet this is exactly what American insurers pay people whose job is tatntamount to that of a private investigator to root around and find out about. Often the 'sore throat' example of a pre-existing condition will have nothing to do with the illness that the insurers refuse to pay for treatment for; the insurance is null and void because you 'intentionally defrauded' them.
TBH its very hard explaining to patients that the absolute gold standard medicine or treatment isn't available in their postcode or on NHS generally but at least those decisions are carried out by professionals on a NICE or local PCT board, in the interests of keeping as many people alive as possible, and not by insurance companies whose financial interest is to pay as little as possible to you alive and keep their 5% return up....
scaredypants - MemberIt *is* also true that the NHS is going to get VERY much more expensive in the near future if we stick with the same model
Why? We already ration expensive treatments that do little good Aging population will have some effect. We can still afford a lot more of our wealth on our health - the rest of Europe and the USA do.
Sorry TJ but we can't afford more wealth on our health, the country is in massive debt. Some NHS services will be cut, it'll be called efficiency savings or whatever but they will happen.
it'll be called efficiency savings or whatever but they will happen.
of course it will happen but that doesn't mean we can't afford it
we can't afford more wealth on our health
Well in that case ......... we best make certain that we concentrate all our efforts on the NHS then.
Because socially provided healthcare will always, represent better value for money than privately provided healthcare - and we don't want to double, as percentage of GDP, the money we spend on healthcare to the level which the yanks spend, do we ?
The wealth this nation produces, will always more than cover what we need to spend on healthcare.