The northlondonhippy

Archive for August 15th, 2009

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.