Archive for August, 2009
August 15th, 2009 | 
Author: The National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK has been in the firing line this week as Americans “debate” overhauling their healthcare system in an attempt to extend access to their 50 million residents who have absolutely no cover or access to care.
Americans are being led to believe that the free healthcare available to all of us in the UK is no good. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny, except for the fact that people’s lives hang in the balance.
The UK has a much higher life expectancy than the USA. Check your statistics and see that I’m not lying. The UK also spends less on healthcare per person than they do in the states, yet they yield better results.
Go figure!
The American healthcare system is run like a for-profit business. Think about that, someone profits from your illness and the percentages of profit are obscenely high.
Insurance companies, drug companies private hospitals, private doctors are all in the game to make money from your misery. That can’t be right, can it? Every test ordered that you don’t really need, every over-prescription is money in the bank for someone.
Just ask Michael Jackson if private healthcare on demand is a good thing. Oh wait, you can’t because it killed him.
In America, healthcare is seen as a privilege, not a basic human right. Should one only be entitled to healthcare on the basis of qualifying for insurance, rather than qualifying for need? Shouldn’t everyone have access to healthcare?
Of course they should!
Some of the scenes I’ve caught on television, of the so-called town-hall meetings have been very amusing, well amusing in as much as the ignorance fuelled anger is simply surreal.
It seems to me, that the loudest voices at these town-hall meetings are coming out of the mouths of people with the least information on the subject. These sad, twisted, ignorant people have an unjustifiable hatred of President Obama that is probably rooted in their inherent racism rather than any actual dislike of a new healthcare system.
All you need to do is listen to what they say, their buzz words, like “socialism” and “this isn’t the America I know” to understand just how misguided and ill-informed these folks are on the subject.
Ok, any subject.
At the heart of all of this is FOX News, the biased and unfair pseudo news network owned by Rupert Murdoch. FOX News provide the stilted talking points and their legions of viewers turn up at town-hall meetings, parroting the same lame shit.
I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I am guessing a wealthy guy like Murdoch must have business interests outside the media world, say perhaps insurance or drug companies. In other words, he may have a vested financial interest in how this debate plays out. And if not him, then some of his rich robber-baron mates have got investments in the medical field. There’s a lot of profit to be protected.
Its funny how SKY News, the sister station of FOX News, under the NewsCorp corporate umbrella is taking a different tack here, righteously defending the NHS against the FOX News inspired attacks. Does one hand not know what the other is doing? Or is SKY simply pandering to their UK-based subscribers?
I think we both know the answer to that one.
I’m in a fairly unique position, having lived considerable lengths of time under both healthcare systems. Neither the US or UK systems are perfect, both excel at some things and lack in others, but overall, I know which system I would choose, if I had to…
The NHS all the way!
In the UK, I’ve never had any concerns about insurance, access to the medical system or being able to afford the costs. I’ve for the most part, had excellent care of a world class standard courtesy of the NHS.
In America I’ve been charged one hundred bucks for a wooden tongue depresser – you know what I’m talking about, a wide wooden popsicle stick.
Open your mouth and say “ahhh fuck, you just charged me a Benjamin to do that!”
In my world, life is usually quite simple and this unhealthy debate is no different. What it boils down to is this: “I’ve already got mine, so screw you if you don’t have yours!” It all comes down to compassion and America’s apparent lack of it.
The Christian right in America preach something known as “compassionate conservatism”, but sadly they don’t practise it in any meaningful or tangible way. Where’s the compassion? What would that guy Jesus do?
Jesus would move to the UK, sign on to the dole and get those holes in his hands and feet looked at for free, same for that nasty stab wound in his side.
Universal healthcare is an undeniable right, yet 50 million Americans are being denied it. Any compassionate person would recognise the inequality in the current system and want to do all they could to change it.
Where are all the compassionate folks in America? Don’t they care about their fellow man? Maybe if there are any, they could go to those silly town-hall meetings and shout down all the ignorant idiots that are making America look so stupid.
Oh and while I’m at it, lay off the NHS. Ill-informed opinion does not make a debate, it just makes you look even more like morons to the rest of the (better informed) world.
