Sorry Yet Again To Interrupt The Horror Narrative
A group styling itself “Patients United Now” (PUN?) has apparently been buying up lots of advertising time on cable news. Some U.S. readers may have seen this one. In it, we are introduced to someone we are told is a Canadian, who informs us she “would have died” had it been up to her government-run health care system, and it was only owing to her journeying down to the States that she got timely life-saving treatment.
Curiously unmentioned in the ad is this: how exactly did she pay for her treatment here? Interestingly, we never find out. Obviously, that small, background monetary factoid wasn’t worth sharing with the viewing audience.
Or, as the English wife noted incredulously as she watched it: “That’s nothing but propaganda!”
Not providing all relevant facts definitely drops it exactly into that category. Americans always get deluged with such whenever the (lack of) health insurance issue re-rears its head. And that commercial is typical of the shock tactics routinely employed.
What we are witnessing all around us are certain advocacy groups determined to stir confusion, and even stoke fear. As if the likes of the British are happily submitting to a “system” that makes sure they all expire, unfed, in unlit, filthy hospital corridors, while in the midst of their 48 month wait to be seen? That that is decidedly not the case?
Tell Americans, say, of the kidney transplant waiting list woman recently scooped up by RAF helicopter off a cruise ship, miles from Britain’s coast, and flown to the mainland when a kidney suddenly became available? All in hours? All on the National Health Service?
Can’t let Americans know about that of course. For that would call into serious question “the horror narrative.” After all, such groups earnestly want Americans who do not have first-hand exposure to the functioning of the NHS, to recoil in horror at the very mention of the letters.
The U.S. having the “best system in the world” is the constant refrain to which we are evidently all expected to genuflect. Some conceit at times verges on the scarily absurd and idiotic. Especially given that health cover in the U.S. is clearly a chaotic mess — a state of affairs demonstrated rather conclusively, one might think, by the existence of the ongoing health cover debate in the first place.
Indeed, in that “best system,” yours truly has known people who, because they lacked insurance, have avoided doctors. This writer has also known those handed astronomical medical bills as casually as if they were being charged for buying a gallon of milk. Yours truly even knows a couple for whom marriage was at least partly decided upon, so one party could benefit from the other’s spousal coverage.
In comparison, yours truly has never known anyone in Britain who avoided a doctor because he was uninsured. Or someone who discovered he had thought he could pay, only to learn the treatment cost far more ultimately than he had bargained for. Nor is yours truly aware of any British marriages having anything to do with health cover.
In short, anyone residing legally in Britain can be a patient, which means patients in Britain are truly “united.” Unlike in the U.S., where, to qualify as a patient, you had better have the correct cover (do you really know what you are covered for and what you are not?), or extraordinarily deep pockets and/or perhaps even a house to sell if need be. Or you aren’t going to get by the receptionist.
Hmm, one notices that “Patients United Now” wants to hear our stories? Oh, good: story time. Unfortunately for them, regarding more of yours truly’s experiences of Britain’s NHS, they most definitely won’t like what they read.
[Posted 7:30 PM July 22, NY time.]
