In sickness and in health

Health: I have been following the debate in the States as Obama tries to do what many Presidents before have failed at - fixing the American Health 'system'. They are either incredibly stupid or the money that is buying the continuance of the present 'private' system is just too strong. Every industrialised nation has the same approximate system except the US and none would swap theirs for the US 'system'. The main difference between them and the rest of the world is that our schemes exist only to meet the medical costs and try to get you better, not make a profit.

The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

I read an excellent article about the fragmented US Health 'system' which breaks their citizens down as -

Native Americans or veterans = Britain (and New Zealand)
People insured through their jobs = Germany:
People over 65 = Canada
The tens of millions without insurance coverage = Burundi - they are like the worlds really poor - those who can't pay, stay sick or die.

700,000 Americans go bankrupt each year because of medical bills. In the rest of the developed world - nil.

The lies that are being spread are unbelievable although the UK are now hitting back.

For all its faults I think our system is good, especially when we add in the ACC system. An advantage we have over even places like Germany and Switzerland is that they have to pay into an insurance scheme (admittedly a good one that is strictly controlled and is not for profit) while ours is simply taxation based.

The only down side is that notwithstanding Government attempts to lower them, the cost of going to the doctor is still too high and we are not putting sensible options into training and retaining (bonding) our medical people. At least children under 5 are free.

After WWII Churchill (the Politician of the 20th Century) went to the electorate and got beaten by the man with the charisma of a damp rag - Clement Atlee. Why - Labour promised a National Health Service.

It will be interesting to see who wins in the US - the money or the people.

Blogger: The damn Search Function in Blogger is not lworking!!! Later>> Looking on the Net it is a fault that they don't seem interested in fixing (soounds like Microsoft) but a workaround seems to be that if you sign in and go to the Edit Posts function it works through that!!