Bank robber demands $1 from teller in order to get free healthcare in prison

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/uk-economy/uk-national-deb...

The British welfare state, including the National Health Service, was created around 1948 at the height of Britain's debt.

Arguments along the lines of "we're in debt" don't really seem to make sense.

I'm also willing to bet the UK spends their medical research dollars more efficiently. In the States, big Pharma researches ways to make money. Elsewhere, research is done mostly by universities & hospitals, who are more interested in fame than fortune.

Last summer my girlfriend was between jobs. She had a non-life threatening but potentially dangerous condition. She went to the hospital and was treated. During the period of time between jobs she had purchased a temporary health insurance policy. That policy declined to pay for the treatment. The hospital presented us with a couple of options, renegotiate the bill, accept some charity, etc. We chose to fight the insurance company and ultimately had them pay it (because it was a valid claim). But one of our options always hovering around was bankruptcy. Do you want to do that? Of course not. We would have rather cleaned out our savings and maxed out the credit cards before doing that, but it was an option.

So there is an obvious path here, get a temporary policy and use the card to get into the hospital. You will probably get denied by the insurance company for a pre-existing condition, but you can then declare bankruptcy.

Now, that is a pretty terrible way to go about it and speaks of how screwed our system is. But I would say bankruptcy is preferable to prison. And since there is that path available, I would think that this guy is mostly an activist. I think he is making a good point (about how prisoners have a right to healthcare, but not the rest of us), but the problem is that it is too easy to punch a hole in his story. Critics will focus on him instead of the underlying message.

The economics of health care is all backwards. It's an economics problem.

If it is possible but not feasible because of cost, then an American, speaking practically, experiences the same thing. Not enough money to pay for medical service. However there is an important difference.

An American must pay something out of pocket. The financial burden may lead to bankruptcy and ultimately no medical care at all. I've noticed that you did not raise concerns about bankruptcy but instead your concern was over slow medical service.

As a senior in college under my parent's military health insurance plan, I had to wait three months to get knee reconstruction surgery.

As a working adult under my company's private health insurance plan, I had a severe ear problem - the earliest I could get an appointment was a month, at which point the doctor thought it might be a tumor, but the earliest I could get an MRI was another two months later (luckily someone who had a midnight appointment canceled a couple of weeks later. I got a phone call at 10pm telling me that if I could get to the hospital by midnight they would fit me in, and they did. Thankfully the MRI was negative).

I've been to the emergency room several times for myself and others. The minimum wait was 3 hours, the maximum was closer to 8.

In several of healthcare experiences, I've been directly billed for services that should have been covered by the healthcare provider, leading to a couple of months of fighting with the hospital and the provider (complete with account turned over to collections, etc).

IOW, your experience with universal health care service seems similar to mine under privately sponsored programs, only you didn't have to worry about having to pay for the services.

Here, the education to become a doctor is free, and there are lots of (free) childcare services available to average people. So a person need only have enough money to survive, and need not pay for school or babysitting above the age of about 3, and graduate a medical doctor without debt.

That is how my mother-in-law, who grew up rather poor, became a neurologist after she had her unplanned baby (my husband).

Look at the various medical boards and find out who is on those boards, when you get referred to a specialist insist on finding someone either on the board or connected to the board. Get those people to put you on the list, and constantly complain to them, they will get you moved up.

My personal experience is with my friend who wanted a nose job because his nose had been broken a few times, he happened to get a connected doctor and had a nose job within a week, his doctor relayed the aforementioned. My other experience is with heart surgery, my mother-in-law was having heart complications, in the suburbs they sent her home with nitro, and told her to come back in a week for some test. She lives in a retirement community so they have poor resources and lots of people needing those resources, especially for heart failure. She was still having pains so I insisted we take her to VGH, at VGH they took it very seriously, we got there about 11 PM and by 4 AM on a Saturday they had done a triple bypass with a surgeon who needed to be called in.

Morale of the story, in Canada you need to be near well funded hospitals with out a lot of old people around, or have connections. If you have a lot of people drawing on a limited resource you'll have to wait a long time in line.

By the way, I guess for ethical reasons basic universal health care is inevitable. (Even the US has rules that require giving emergency care.)

Second, there are a whole bunch of pieces to the system that keeps this in place. Relationships between lobbyists and government. Campaign financing regulations. Gerrymandering. SCOTUS interpretation of the commerce clause. If you started fixing a few pieces like those ... one at a time over decades ... you could change a lot of things.

Both are fiscally solid for decades, and yet are under attack by those who would profit from their demise.

Not only are we not getting closer to universal health care (or even insurance) but recent news indicates there is majority political support (note: not the majority of public) for some form of medicare/medicaid reduction.