Actually, Is Brainpower Being Rationed?
CNN’s Glenn Beck, interviewing Ben Stein (encore), June 23 transcript:
…Here`s what`s frightening, Ben. Here we are sitting in a society, in a world that`s going to universal health care, universal health care that you can`t afford. They`re already rationing it over in London, in England…
Here’s what’s more frightening. While Mr Beck is hardly the first to spout such, that sort of commentary only demonstrates he is yet someone else without any real experience or knowledge of the workings of universal health care in Britain. Even worse, how many Americans who watch him (meaning, especially, conservatives) might internalize such flippant rubbish as constituting “common knowledge”?
In being so pompously ignorant, the likes of Mr Beck are only making it that much more likely Sen Obama will end up in the White House.
Gosh, in trying to be sane, sometimes one feels adrift out here . . .
[posted 12 PM NY time]
Yet consistently what Americans seem to want is for the central government or state government to do is to make health insurance, not health care, available. When the idea of universal or nationalized health care is bandied about then all sorts of caveats appear. In other words most Americans seem content with the quality of the treatment available but are dissatisfied with the cost and difficulty of access to that care.
But when articles appear that show that the government in the UK has continued to place limits on how many people can be transported to the ER then its is certainly not surprising that those who oppose changing health care would use those examples to scare the whizz out of the voters.
Sorry, Robert…I’m going to have to disagree with you there.
If you happen to live in a constituency or region that is never going to vote with the prevailing government, chances are, your health care will be rationed.
We here in true blue West Sussex are looking at a massive cutting back of services for our area.
The best place to be for health care in this country is a marginal.
Also, private insurance does little good if you have to get through the filters of the NHS GP, which can take up to a week if it’s not immediately urgent, in order to get seen by a private practitioner.
The hygienic state of the hospitals where I live would bring on lawsuits anywhere in the US, including some of the dodgiest City Hospitals.
I believe you live out Bournemouth/Christchurch way? When I was visiting a friend, we had to take our daughter to casualty there, once. We were amazed at the ability to be seen within the space of an hour or two rather than waiting the requisite 4 before being shuffled off elsewhere. We were also amazed at the state of the hospital, how clean it was, etc. We still have yet to experience an NHS hospital in the UK as nice as the one down your way.
And the reason my wife has decided not to have another baby in the UK was the treatment she received at Kings College Hospital in London. She went through 18 hours of pain she shouldn’t have gone through all on the possibility that they might save a bed in the maternity ward. Seems like rationing to me. The whole home-birthing movement is exactly that, delegating authority to midwifes rather than doctors and trying to avoid using hospital services at all costs, even the wellbeing of the baby and mother.
I’m not defending the US system, cause it is broke, but for my money, the reason it is broke is due to similar distortions of the market that we experience here in the UK…It is free – especially when provided by employers or the government.
De-regulate the insurance business in the States, making it so that people who are, for instance, not going to have babies, like anyone over 50, doesn’t have to pay for maternity coverage. Take away the tax breaks available to employers for providing health insurance.
If the US went the way of the UK, most of the innovations that happen in health care would stop. We would more or less freeze the technological levels of medical provision much as has happened in the UK.
There are treatments in the US that people have been taking for granted for more than 10 years that have yet to make it over here due to the fact that they can’t be provided on the same scale to everyone. Quite often, people are told just to live long-term with minor problems in the UK that can get cleared up rather quickly in the US with the right prescription.
Anyway…All I can say is that every time someone in my family has had to deal with anything more than a visit to the GP here, there have been some baleful results that would not have been tolerated in either the US or Germany (another system better than the UK’s), and a lot of it comes back to rationing of health care provision.