Posted on 11/22/2008 6:55:48 PM PST by Jim Noble
It's really this simple.
When I was a medical student, I spent 1976 in London, working in an NHS hospital. In March, my landlady came to me with a hard lump in her neck, almost certainly a cancer. She had been given an appointment with the chief of my department - in October!
By October, she might well be dead. Any chance of cure would almost certainly be long gone.
I thought to reassure her. "Come 'round with me tomorrow. I'll get you in to see him right away, and we'll do what can be done".
I'll never forget the look on her face. It was like I slapped her.
"Oh, NO! That wouldn't be right!"
The success of the socialist government Americans have just saddled themselves with turns on whether or not a majority will feel as she did - better dead than a queue jumper.
My opinion (I've practiced medicine in the US for thirty years) is that they won't, and the project will fail.
What say you all?
Unicorns, rainbows, bunnies, blue skies, and Obama.
Oh wait, I meant a real Messiah, not a false Messiah.
Socialism is a failed system. Too bad that the bumbling idiots ruling us are so blinded by their lust for power that they can not see this basic reality.
Oh they can see all right!
A womanizing professor is dying of cancer, and his son tries to make his end more bearable by getting his father out of Canada into a better hospital setting in New England. But his father, an unrepentent socialist, does not wish to cross the border. Even death is preferable to capitalism.
The film also goes into the union control of Canadian health care and the bribes the son has to pay for his father to end his life comfortably. It's a must-see film.
The problem is not the nationalized health care system, but the humans in it. If the humans can be simply scrubbed out, it will all work perfectly.
I think you’re right, doctor. Americans want quick attention to these kinds of matters and just aren’t going to be that patient with having to wait.
It would be a huge culture shock from what we currently experience in the medical realm.
I can see folks phoning congressmen repeatedly to jump the line for this medical treatment or the next when socialized medicine comes down here.
I can see minority preferences being used to make statistics look more equal, as far as prevalence of disease and death, myself.
For nobody to be sick. Viola!
5.56mm
I dont know about how the public will react, but I’ve been in practice for 20 years. The day we get socialized medicine is the day I retire and open my quilt shop. A lot of my colleagues feel the same way. Good luck finding a significant number of American trained physicians to participate in national health care, let alone the patients!
So, what happened to your landlady?
Did she wait until October?
Was her cancer treatable?
Did she die waiting for an appointment?
Inquiring minds want to know..........
the exact opposite will happen in the US. The first time those getting the “free” health care get the sniffles they’ll be running to the doctor.
Go to any ER on a Saturday night. Snapshot of Social Medicine.
Many of the electorate in this country are friggin brain dead (thankfully, though, not all). Consider the union workers who vote who they’re told to vote for, the people who only bother to listen to sound bites from the MSM, without educating themselves on each candidate before they vote, college students who vote idealistically and haven’t the experience or knowledge to see through the hype....
Although less so now than several years ago, I’m still hopeful that there ARE enough voters with common sense, that will vote against politicians ramming single(government) payor healthcare down our throats.
Having witnessed the health care system from both sides = as a RN for almost 20 years, and as a patient with kidney failure/transplant and other fun stuff, I can honestly say that while our system is certainly imperfect, it’s the best the world in the world (and yes, I was fortunate enough to not at all have to go on Medicare).
People in the UK don’t know any different. I had an appointment last month with my transplant surgeon the day after one of the debates. He trained in England (and I think was born there), and came to the US within the past few years.
He started talking politics, and was vehemently pro-Obama. I didn’t get into much of a conversation (what’s the point; I wasn’t going to convince him otherwise), and I was told how desperately the US needs universal healthcare, that there are so many sick people in the country without insurance, and how well it works in the UK.
Of course, I would have liked to tell him of the patient (on Medicaid) that I was following out of our clinic on my way to get lunch one day; she was younger than I and taking her cane for a walk, and was telling her boyfriend how she had gotten the Rx for a motorized wheelchair from her doctor. As she neared the door, she put the cane under her arm, and walked out of the building without even a limp; our tax dollars at work....
As someone who has lived with a chronic illness for almost 40 years I’m scared to death about having to wait in line.
I left the UK in May to graduate. She hadn't been seen by then.
I don't know what happened to her.
Do you mean Medicaid?
What doctor?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.