If Great Britain’s National Health Care System is any reliable indicator, long waiting list for service is my choice for #1.
108 year old grandmother, Olive Beal must wait up to 18 months to receive her digital hearing aids.
(DailyMail UK) A woman aged 108 has been told she must wait 18 months before the Health Service will give her the hearing aid she needs.
Former piano teacher Olive Beal, one of the oldest people in Britain, has poor eyesight and uses a wheelchair.
The delay could mean she will be unable to communicate and listen to the music she loves.
One might think that this may be an isolated case of someone lost in the system or the device is so specialized that obtaining one may be problematic. Not so fast, Mrs. Beal is not alone, so I don’t think either of those excuses are valid.
The one-time suffragette is one of hundreds of thousands of older people made to wait up to two years and sometimes more for modern digital hearing aids that make a dramatic difference to their ability to hear and communicate.
Mrs. Beal has hearing aids but a doctor has assessed that she needs the digital hearing aids to cut down back ground noise so that she may enjoy the conversations and music that she once enjoyed. The digital hearing aids would make a vast improvement in this ladies quality of life. It does not matter:
Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust have told her family she must wait 18 months before she gets one on the NHS. By then Mrs Beal will be aged 110.
Mrs. Beal could purchase her hearing aids on the private market for about £1,000 (about $2300). But why should she? This is National Health Care is it not?
‘I (Mrs. Beal’s Daughter) would have thought they would take her age into account as she probably has not got 18 months to wait.
‘Olive worked hard from the age of 16 to her late 60s and paid taxes. She has been healthy all her life and lived with her daughter until 15 years ago - she has never sponged off the state.
(snip)
‘It is an issue of quality of life, with isolation, frustration and withdrawing from society caused by loss of hearing, and it is sad because this is reversible.’
No to National Health Care Reason #2
Apologies and excuses.
A spokesman for Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust said: ‘We are reducing waiting times.
‘The priority is given to patients who do not have an existing hearing aid, but we accept our service needs improving.
We apologise to any patient kept waiting for a new or replacement hearing aid.’
If this is indeed what National Healthcare looks like, I don’t want it.
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No no no nononononononononoonoooooooo.
They probably won’t understand that - just ask the hundreds moving to Canada
In reference above
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3433005&page=1
We already have great national health care, ask any illegal immigrant.
Oh come on, let’s grow that government, that’s what is all about in the new America. Paying for the government expansion, waste, poor service and then those that can afford it paying again by going out of the system and that money is taxed again. I love it so much I majored in it. Public Administration, the degree of red tape.
Heck, just look at social security those that pay the most surely are not planning on using or getting anything back. They have additional financial planning, 401k, stock portfolios, bonds, etc.. A Marxist program that is doomed to crash and burn according to my info sheet they send the year after I will be eligible for benefits as currently set up by law. Boy, that makes me glad I pay in.
When I was in Britain, I noticed there are a lot of private doctor and dentists practices there that people who can afford it go to because they know they don’t get good or expedient health care and dental when it’s on the Government’s dole.
I know, I know, “but it’s for the children!” Tears in my eyes and I look down at my wringing hands.
It’s not the government’s job to take care of people, it’s themselves and family if that fails then their church and charities.
Replace hearing aids with surgeries, biopsys and other imiportant health treatments. A dear friend of mine lived in England for a bit….. and tells me, ” if you think waiting 4 hours in an emergency room is a long time, try over 8″ At the end of your 8hour wait, a nurse may come say you have to go home, we have no dr here that can see you. The nurse will also come out and tell everyone who isnt life threatening to go home. NO THANKS
Those American folks slithering off to Canada may be in for a big surprise, someday…
WorldNetDaily: PREMEDITATED MERGER
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53599
As a more worrisome note in America, the house,( who thinks money grows on trees) passed a bill last night that gives free health insurance for children of any family of 4 making less than 84,000 a year. Get ready to run really realy really fast on the hamster wheel or we will die from taxation. Hopefully the senate will say , ” NO, you idiots” but write your senator to be sure.
But its FREE.. man, FREE! What part of FREE don’t you guys understand? FREE!
/sarc off
In Rome I was able to talk in-depth with a Roman citizen, who told me that America had a great health-care system, and we shouldn’t want socialized med care such as theirs. Her mother was declining, physically and mentally (here she demonstrated a blank look on her face to simulate her mother’s state). She yanked her mother out of the doctor’s care against the wishes of her family and friends, and as of the day of our conversation said her momma was happy and doing things around the house. The doctors there were not of the quality they are here. The storekeeper’s children are in America, and one of her daughters is a doctor here. The daughter has told her mother the realities of medicine here.
I also heard from our guide that in at least some hospitals, you were expected to provide food for your family member.
Y’all, this isn’t an either-or thing. What’s needed is a hybrid system that picks up the slack for the 25% who have no insurance without disrupting care for everyone else. For them, the wait for healthcare can be forever, so always compare other government systems to THEIR wait, not your own (for those who have insurance).
And to #3, yes, anybody can get short-term acute care at an emergency room, but it’s not free, they send you a bill and it goes on your credit record if you can’t pay. Even so, ER care costs about 10x what the same services would cost delivered in a clinic (because emergency rooms are staffed and equipped for worst case scenarios, and that’s expensive). If insuring more people took pressure off the ERs, it might actually save money overall for taxpayers, is the irony of all these complaints. It’s just that local property taxes pay for hospitals and federal taxes pay for CHIP and Medicaid, but the taxes all come out of our pockets in the end.
Finally, there also is a great need for insurance regulation and taking medical decisions out of the hands of insurance company beancounters - we need to make the free market system work better for people who have insurance if you want to avoid calls for “socialized” medicine. best,
The trouble with socialized medicine is that you have infinite demand for finite resources.
1/3 of all British heart attack victims NEVER see a cardiologist.
Also, in America, the profit motive insures that the “best and brightest” are attracted into medicine. This is not the case in Britain, where doctors are government employees on limited salaries (does your post office have the best and brightest?)
I was appalled at the dirt in British hospitals, and the waiting time for necessary surgery. There was also a tendency to apply the cheapest solution, even if it wasn’t the correct one and might cost more in the long run.
For example, an American 4 year old had a compound fracture of her arm, which became infected (back to those dirty hospitals again). Three times, the doctors performed surgery to remove diseased bone, shortening her arm, then placed her on antibiotics. When the desperate mother finally gave up and took the child to the US, she was told the girl had been on a cheap antibiotic which - while great for ear infections - would never do any good for a bone infection. After 6 weeks on intravenous antibiotics, the child recovered. But she’ll have one arm shorter than the other as a memento of the efficacy of socialized medicine.
Someone need to let all the illegal aliens in the USA know about that free Canadian health care so they will all want to go there instead!
Oh wait. They’re already getting it for free here.
Nevermind.
Funny, people who scream for the VA Hospitals to be fixed love the Idea of Socialist Medicine.
Grits,
Do you dispute that ERs can’t turn people away despite their inability to pay? ER care only costs 10X more than clinic care for hospitals and paying patients.
Grits
Look ‘em up yerself, statistics show that the greatest portion of that 25% consists of two groups.
1. People who can afford insurance but choose not to participate
2. Illegal aliens.
What is it with you guys? Socialism and socialistic programs has been shown time and again throughout the world not to work. Yet liberals continue to say “Oh we can improve on the systems that have been tried.” Wait a minute, the damn systems FAILED. How can one improve on failed? Oh I know, let’s fail worse and go straight to communism.
I have a better idea for you Grits. Howsabout you and your socialist brethren start supporting the few charitable hospitals that are still in business with the same fervor that you want to redistribute wealth and the problem will solve itself.
Once again the specter of the redistribution of wealth raises its ugly head.
“Socialist”? Heavens, is it 1985 again already?
Squawkbox, your assertions about who doesn’t have insurance are just wrong - many people can’t afford it if they don’t get it through their employer. Private insurance cherrypicks healthy customers and charges high prices to those who are sick. But the purpose of insurance is to pool risk. So excluding those with the highest cost thwarts that goal. I’m calling for regulation of private insurance and supplementing gaps, not socialism.
@Dude, ERs can and do turn people away for non-emergency acute care. And when folks get care who can’t pay, as I wrote, “it’s not free, they send you a bill and it goes on your credit record if you can’t pay.” An unpaid bill doesn’t make it free if the debt isn’t expunged. It’s just evidence that the health finance system is dysfunctional.
Finally, would you PREFER people who couldn’t pay were turned away for emergency care?
“your assertions about who doesn’t have insurance are just wrong - many people can’t afford it if they don’t get it through their employer”
NOT TRUE!! One of the biggest lies coming from the left! Have you priced insurance on your own? I have it IS affordable. Just shop around, like anything else.
Many who choose not to can afford car payments of about $500.00 per month, a cable bill of about $100.00 per month, wear $200.00 tennis shoes, etc…etc….etc but can’t cough up a monthly payment for health care insurance on their own?
If they’d sacrifice their lifestyle for their needs, they could do it. I’ve done it! I am doing it now! I have my own insurance and had to forego my wants for my needs.
Two words that fail to make it through the liberal filter is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!
“Finally, would you PREFER people who couldn’t pay were turned away for emergency care?”
I would, because I am cruel. I say feed them to crocodiles. Gator’s gotta eat…..
Grtisy Gritsy Gritsy
Words have meanings. Here ya go, straight from the dictionary.
And please read the little black words, really there is nothing in the white areas that are appropriate to the discussion.
and then you have the gumption to say this.
First of all private insurance is already regulated by the gubment. Or have you missed story after story how the insurance companies are awaiting permission from state agencies to raise rates? Supplementing gaps? Now where the heck do you think that money is going to come from? Government funds? Here is a news flash for you Grits. Government funds come from taxes and fees assessed by the government against taxpayers. In case you missed the memo that be folks like you and me.
My assertions are absolutely spot on. Go look em up. I did.
Furthermore pooling the risk is what the hell I am talking about. And if you are not aware it is them heffy folks that insurance companies rely on to keep rates low. You know. They pay but don’t have any payouts.
In effect what you are proposing is forcing people to pay for health care when they have decided they don’t need it for the sake of the collective. So much for personal responsibility rights and freedoms.
That is the reason why the Bushco’s medication entitlement program is over cost because folks that don’t have a need for the service have not signed up. This program started out as an opt-in and is supplimented by folks like me that don’t need it in the form of taxation. Sweet.
Same principle. Hey I just used a government social program to prove my point further.
I ain’t gonna do your homework for you. Go look it up for yourself. I don’t make too many blind assertions and this ain’t one now.
Oh and one more thing before I go Gritsy.
Referring back to my story. There is/has been story after story where folks have mucho troubles getting into seeing a doctor where gov health care exists. Why do you think Canadians cross the border to America to see a doctor?
Sorry mate but my boredom level has been reached so I gotta go now. I have “OBSCENE PROFITS” to make. Have a nice day.
Let me spell it for you guys UNINSURABLE. That is what I am told when I call for a rate quote. I am 61 years old and was laid off my job and my good insurance last year last year. I can get a policy for $1000 a month with a $5000 deductable, but that is wasting money. Don’t say everyone can get insurance, it isn’t true. I go to the doctor and he gives me prescription samples and I get generics when I can. It is possible to keep the price down, but everyone can not get insurance.
No matter how much evidence you have to the contrary, a socialist will always think the government can do a better job of it. Was HELLary’s plan under her husband’s administration evidence enough of the bureacracy that socialized medicine would create. Need anymore be said!!!!
I am not saying that is not so. I am pointing out, once again, the dangers of the government creating a National Healthcare program. It has been proven over and over again that it is inefficient and not as user friendly as the socilaist folks would have you to believe. This story is just a tip of the iceberg with what would be wrong.
Bigmk,the largest contributor to the cost of the insurance you’ve been quoted is government regulation!
Government requires insurers to cover so much stuff (birth control, sex change, etc), that the cost is driven way up for everybody.
If the regulators would keep their hands off insurance, you’d be able to choose an affordable policy which doesn’t cover stuff you don’t need (like birth control!).
Grits,
Which ones? If what you say is true, where are illegals getting treated? You make claims with no specifics to validate them.
No, I wouldn’t prefer that true emergencies go untreated, but if the patient is an illegal immigrant then they should receive only the bare minimum it takes to keep them alive. They should then be deported to their country of origin and said country held liable for any incurred expenses. Treating lawbreakers should be one of the last items on our medical priority list.
All in all, I have to agree with Squawk here. You continue to provide evidence that you are interested in social engineering and redistributing wealth. As a consequence, I have no further interest in your ideas aside from working to prevent their implementation.
bigmck
My wife was uninsurable from numerous insurers because of her health. But, we found a carrier that accepted her because she can be kept under control with medication. But, we had to shop around, and it was affordable. But, there are millions of people rolling the dice that they won’t need insurance, but can make a boat payment or drive a better car, or take a trip, or…. For some they can’t help it, for many it’s a lifestyle choice.
Dude,
HO LOTRO,
Understood and I remember that myself, but that’s a completely different thing than being turned away specifically because you can’t pay or because you’re in the country illegally. So I still don’t see where Grits is right on the issue at hand.
#18 ” if they would sacrifice their lifestyle for their needs..” Fast. great words! you nailed it!!
Dude he is right that emergency rooms will turn away people, but it depends upon the situation.
If the government would stop with all the rules and regulations, and they allowed the market to determine the price things would be a lot cheaper.
Bull crap Lotro
When a hospital room goes on drive by that means the ambulances can’t come in. If you walk in they will see you ASAP and then transfer you out.
My wife is a paramedic and just confirmed this.
That is HOGWASH, and I challenge you to provide verifiable proof that people seeking medical attention are being turned away. IT DOESN”T HAPPEN. My wife worked for years on the front lines of admissions at a local hospital, and nobody was ever turned away. Hospitals would rather absorb the loss than deal with the lawyers who are waiting to sue on behalf of anyone who is denied care.
And how exactly can they do that with no SS#, no credit card, and an address that can change in an instant? These folks can, and do, disappear into thin air. The hospitals just write these charges off as bad debt, and they don’t pursue credit reports - they know better than to waste their time. Again, she has verified this.
You need to check your facts before you post.
That is absolutely correct, Squawk. They transfer people, but they do not turn people away. Everybody gets treated, and often that actually happens quicker if they are transferred to a facility that’s less busy.
These people need to get a clue.
I’m not going to dispute folks who don’t want to hear (or provide) evidence, but this from the Dude strikes me as a sad commentary:
“You continue to provide evidence that you are interested in social engineering and redistributing wealth. As a consequence, I have no further interest in your ideas aside from working to prevent their implementation.”
Dude, that’s ridiculous. We have a government, and a tax system, and a regulatory structure. It exists, it’s taking our money (like it or not) and it’s broken. People getting healthcare at the ERs - which you’re right, many do - is a terrible public policy choice. If you can treat them more cheaply, why not?
Do you LIKE higher taxes? Right now you’re just paying locally instead of to the feds; other countries pay much less for healthcare per capita than us and have better national health outcomes.
If that’s your position, btw, that there should be NO government-funded healthcare, your only honorable presidential choice is Ron Paul. For the rest, Democrat and Republican alike, the economics of the situation will ultimately compel their corporate paymasters to do something so they don’t have to pay for it, just like with Bush and prescription drugs. Sorry to inject a little realism into the string, you can go back to deluding yourselves now that you support “small government.”
Grits
I cannot understand your reasoning here. We are arguing not to give the government more control of ANYTHING. You argue for more government control and yet admit, nay agree, that the system is broken. Imagine my confusion here.
I have provided evidence (albeit a minimal amount in this exchange), where turning control of anything over to the government is a disaster in the making. Yet your solution still remains the expansion of socialistic experiments that have failed miserably over the course of time.
To be fair I will offer my solution. 3 words
Unfettered free market.
Now there is a solution that has proven viable to any problem of economic concern.
And what is this “corporate paymasters” junk. Who do you think pays wages? Here is another news flash for you. It takes people to create businesses (including corporations) to create jobs and provide wages to individuals. I would submit if the government get out of their and MY BACKPOCKET everyone would have enough money to live on and provide for themselves.
It ain’t none of your business what my income is or my debt load, but if the government let me keep my money that they take from me to spend on programs that I do not qualify for by their standards and never will, I could live much more comfortably than I do AND give more to the charitable hospitals.
Grits says:
The words in the second blockquote were mine, not Grits’.
Grits lied! Patients died!–NOT!!!
No, I’ve not been caught red handed telling lies, I’m a) bored with your hostile and demeaning tone, and b) I haven’t worked on these issues in ten years and don’t have data to hand the way I would if we were talking about criminal justice.
And you’re right, Dude, you don’t understand, like Maltboy. We pay MORE for WORSE healthcare than other nations. You like your taxes higher and services worse than people in other countries, I don’t know why.
Y’all don’t want to listen to evidence. #21 tells you he can’t get insurance - you tell him to shop around more, basically just insulting him by saying he didn’t really try. Someone else tells you Ben Taub DOES turn people away. Oh, that doesn’t prove anything, you say. With those responses, I’m not going to go do a lot of extra research for you.
Christ warned us not to cast pearls before swine, and folks on this string are responding to facts with vitriol and ill-informed ideological crowing. The conversation on this blog, thankfully, is often more constructive on other topics.
/Grits conveniently ignores my reply.
and
I think you just called everyone here crowing pigs. Nice, real nice.
I do not see you refuting my “ill-informed ideological crowings” Grits. You have yet to show me where in this world (that means the Earth) that governmental controlled National Health Care has worked. If working to you means that “everyone” gets healthcare I will surrender that argument.
However, if you mean everyone gets healthcare and the care/service is equal too or greater than what we have now I would submit that the service would be taking a giant leap backward.
You have bolstered your own “ideological crowings” with innuendo and opinion. So as Christ said,
Oh btw…..
That’s good. Now you can come down off your cross. We need the firewood.
Grits,
Why not? Because in the case of illegal immigrants they shouldn’t be treated at all. Your opinion seems to be that we should find the cheapest way possible to treat them. My opinion is that not treating them at all would be as cheap as it could possibly get, and that’s the only truly acceptable option to me.
If you rob me and you only take part of my money, that’s no more moral than taking all of it. If you want to be a nice guy and treat people who are in this country illegally then do it with your money, not mine. The liberal tendency to use other people’s money for their charitable intentions is disgusting. Unfortunately, there are too many Republicans as well as Democrats who have the “Robin Hood” mentality because it helps them get elected.
What exists between you and I, Grits, is a fundamental ideological gap. You believe it’s OK to take other people’s money for charity without their consent and I do not. It’s just that simple. I am perfectly capable of choosing which charities I contribute to for myself. I don’t need your help, nor do I need the government’s help in that regard.
BTW, playing the “Ron Paul” card on this is ridiculous. You know damn well that one can be a fiscal conservative without supporting a 9/11 “truther” whackjob like Ron Paul. Seriously Grits, give that a rest. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand your position. The problem is that I do understand it and my position is diametrically opposed to yours.
Grits says:
Wow. Now that’s what I call elitist liberal diatribe.
Sorry we bored your highness by challenging your inaccuracies.
Sorry that our challenge made your highness “tired”.
Sorry we would expect your highness to do something demeaning, like a little research, before you posted your false allegations here.