Emphasis of "if's" and "but's" mine.
Oh.
(Emphasis of "if's" and "but's" mine again.)
Well, so much for Architect's claim that:
So it's not free, and it's not without limit.
Which is kinda what I expected. We have the same limitations here. You can't get what you can't pay for, which should come as a surprise to no one.
And I wasn't talking about paying for a heart and lung from Tibet. Would NHS pay for the cost of flying a donor's organs to the UK if they could get the organs free (NHS just pays for the shipping and handling)?
BPSCG
Lets be quite clear:
1. NHS medical treatment is available free at the point of delivery to all UK and Irish citizens, regardless of whether they have ever paid tax or national insurance contributions.
2. There are
no exceptions. There are no "excesses" (patient contribution) for treatment, or exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions. There is no limit on treatment cost. It is effectively universal healthcare.
3. This regime includes (but exclusively) out patient consultations, scans, tests, in patient treatment, in patient treatment, physiotherapy, care costs, and just about everything else you can think of. The only exception are out-patient prescriptions, which are a flat-fee and on average significantly cheaper than US pharmacies.
4. New and unusual treatments must be approved by either NHS Scotland or NHS England & Wales prior to implementation. In practice, as long as there is evidence of clinical effectiveness, then they are approved. The only discrepancy is that a couple of experimental drugs have been approved in Scotland, but not England.
Now reading between the lines, I think you're trying to make the case that in actual fact the US system and UK system are both similar inasmuch as you end up paying either way. But this is not wholly correct:
- There are, according to Congress, something in the region of 45 million people (what's that, about 20% of the population?) in the US who do not actually have any health insurance and therefore have to rely on federal and state systems.
- Less than 60% of the US population is covered by employer's insurance.
- The limitations of both Medicare and the various types of Medicaid are well recocognised in the US and abroad. With the best will in the world, they do
not provide complete medical care and there is also provision for reclaiming expenditure through patient assets.
- Whilst I am awarethat some people in the States get away with as little as 2-3% for their healthcare premiums, I am well aware that the typical costs are at least double this. I also note that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act does not apply to private policies.
Why am I droning on about this:
(a) You sought to suggest that Castro's health was in some way compromised purely because that country had a publicly funded healthcare system.
This is, frankly, ludicrous. Most of Western Europe has such a system (with varying degrees of private sector involvement) and medical treatment in the EU is comparable to that in the states.
Now if you want to revisit the original point and clarify that there is a specific concern about the Cuban healthcare system, then fair enough.
(b) To go back to one of the first points I made on the subject, at the end of the day there is a difference in philosophical/social approach on this. Western Europe (and others) view free (at the point of delivery), universal healthcare as a human right. In American you have not shared this view traditionally.
