SO YA THINK SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IS SO GOOD

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do ya?

Amazing huh? Cuba, the very nation that lardass Michael Mooreon and serial nitwit Oliver Stone(d) tout as el supremo in the area of universal healthcare did not even make the list. Oh, and the UK, that GREAT system they have, they come almost last. Now the Gunny knows that the Canadian PM came to the USA for heart surgery, they’re in second place!

Ain’t universal healthcare grand?

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/11/23/the-myth-of-americans-poor-life-expectancy/

11 thoughts on “SO YA THINK SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IS SO GOOD”

  1. it wasn’t the PM of Canada who had the heart surgery it was the premier of one of the provinces.

    still the Canadian system suffers for government involvement. we will need to go to clinics in India or Mexico for elective treatment in the near future.

    I waited 6 months to see a specialist after an MRI indicated I had a tumour in my neck. Turns out it was ruptured disc which is healing on its own.

    • General, thanks for the correction. I like my stuff to be accurate and when it ain’t, I can always count on a reader to help me out. Kudos.

      get well soon.

  2. When the Govt will not let you refuse care to anyone no matter who then it would be expected that you would spend more than anyone else on healthcare, that don’t make you a bad country, it makes us the good Christian Nation that we are. It’s because of the illegal non Christian leaching lowlife sicans, ricans, mussys, africans and halfricans that the same Govt will not eject. This vermin is on a constant trip to the emergency room crying ” oh Doc my nose is running or I got a bellyache, I hate America”. We provide the worlds best everything to them and they will never stop hating us because that is who they are pure evil.
    It’s those same Christian people of this great nation that are having this illegal redistribution crammed down our throats footing the bill and the most of us do not run to the emergency room every time we stub our toe.

  4. I’m surprised your still in America Simon everything seems so peachy in the UK (hell maybe you are in the UK).
    The reason we spend so much in healthcare is because the worthless Government keeps sticking their pinocchio nose in our damn business. Seems like anyone can have free health care in America just go to any emergency and look at all the low life going there because they have the flu or their little miha has a cold they close down hospitals because the commies in gov makes the hospitals take care of morons and then only pay 20% of the bill so when it comes time for me to pay I have to pay triple to make up for the freeloaders. You can have universal health care go ahead and pay for it out of your pocket and leave me the hell alone…Just my opinion.

  5. The assholes who are ALL FOR this will most likely end up being the biggest WHINERS about it. And,when they DO whine, POW,right in the chops.

  6. Gunny,
    Certainly some interesting statistics and the United States unquestionably has a world class health care system – indeed it would be very difficult for the world’s wealthiest country to devote one-sixth of its economy to health care and not to produce a world class health system. There are however some caveats to this. If you go to the World Health Organisation’s website and look at the Global Health Observatory Data Repository it’s interesting to compare the statistics for the UK and the USA. For one thing the US spends far more, relatively, on health care than Britain does. According to WHO the US currently spends $7,410 per capita total expenditure on health compared to a British figure of $3,399. To put it another way Britain devotes 9.3% of its GDP to health care, the US 16.2%. Moreover let’s not be selective in our use of statistics – yes America has the best survival rates for cancer in the world but you do not mention that in the UK the chance of dying under the age of 5 is 5 (per 1000 live births) whilst in the USA the figure is 8. Life expectancy in Britain is slightly higher than in the US – 78/82 (M/F) compared to 76/81. One could go on but it is surely not unreasonable to suggest that the superior performance of the US system in certain areas is simply due to America spending more money on health.
    The point is that comparing health care systems is no easy task. An American journalist based in London once said that while most Americans get better healthcare than most Britons the US system is far more expensive and also fails to provide universal coverage. It also appears to be far more complex. In the late eighties when I was doing my post-registration training as a community nurse I always recall one lecture when we discussed this point and the tutor claimed that, in the US system, a much higher proportion of the money spent on healthcare was absorbed in administration. One of the merits of the British system is its relative simplicity. When I had a problem with my own health four years ago I simply went to my GP, was referred to a hospital specialist, was seen rather quickly if my memory serves me correctly, had various investigations carried out, and the results were then sent back to my doctor. All this under the NHS and no complex administration involving private insurance companies.
    In fact if one looks at the amount of money Britain spends on health care, compares it to the total sum spent by the USA and then looks at outcomes overall. (rather, Gunny, than just taking one set of statistics, reproducing them and then claiming that this concludes the argument) it as least arguable that the much-maligned NHS is actually more efficient than the US system.
    One more point – some years ago I met a British couple who moved to New York in the 1980s. They fully intended this to be a permanent move and were going to take out US citizenship but then their infant son, who was born in the USA, was diagnosed with an extremely rare and incurable condition which meant that he would require a lifetime of expensive medical intervention. They had health insurance and received excellent care in the States but they chose to return to Britain – not because the care their son received from the NHS was better (although they certainly seem to have found that it was just as good) but because it was free at the point of delivery. I was involved with this young man’s care at one point and I couldn’t help reflecting that here was a native-born New Yorker (indeed I believe he is actually entitled to a US passport) who has grown up in London simply because he needed the care of the NHS.
    I’m rather proud of the NHS, in which I worked for fifteen years and some of the comments about the service do not seem to be particularly well-informed. Indeed during the height of the debate over “Obamacare” in 2010 the Investor’s Business Daily apparently made the extraordinary claim that Professor Stephen Hawkins would have been allowed to die under the NHS as the service would have considered his life to be “worthless”. The author of this remarkable piece of investigative journalism seems to have been unaware that, first, Professor Hawkins is British, secondly, that he lives he lives in Britain, and thirdly, that the NHS has saved his life on more than one occasion – as he subsequently made clear in a response to the journal.
    America has an excellent heath care system Gunny but there seems to be a significant minority of Americans who lack adequate access to that system. The NHS on the other hand has flaws but it also has significant strengths. Can I just conclude by asking you a question. Do you agree that the British couple I mentioned above did the right thing when they returned to the UK so their son could be treated by the NHS?
    Simon

    • Just the other day I read a story where 135,000 elderly patients were allowed to die through neglect in your health care system. No thanks amigo.

      • Crockett,
        Sorry, didn’t realize that I hadn’t made myself clear. I do indeed live in the UK, have done so all my life and am very happy to be here. Thanks for mentioning emergency rooms though because I had intended to address that point. Some US conservatives have suggested that whilst people may not have health insurance they can still access health care by attending the ER (casualty department in British parlance). This is a completely inadequate substitute for having access to a proper primary health care facility. I myself worked as part of the primary health care team in the east end of London for five years and it is tremendously important that all citizens have access to a GP – indeed all UK citizens have a legal right to register with a family doctor..Iif people do not have such access and instead have to turn to an ER they will tend to seek help later than they would otherwise do and this can have serious, even fatal, consequences. In any event ER/Casualty departments are designed and equipped to provide acute and emergency care, their purpose is not to provide primary care. If indeed many Americans are turning to the emergency rooms to receive medical help which in the UK would be provided by the GP service then there is a serious problem with the system.
        Gunny,
        I’d be grateful if you could provide a source for your claim of 135,000 elderly patients dying of neglect. Certainly I’d like to look into that although my gut reaction is to take those figures with a pinch of salt. Incidentally I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t actually answer any of the points that I made, particularly concerning the relative cost-effectiveness of the two systems and the specific point about the couple who brought their American-born son back to the UK to be treated by the NHS. Also the USA does seem to be unique among developed nations in not providing universal health coverage funded in some way by the taxpayer.
        Simon

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