[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 18:09:54 +0100
Tuesday, May 24, 2005, 4:58:12 PM, Brian wrote:
B> I know that a lot of
>> my money is boondoggled, but it also pays for decent health care for me
>> and all my 62 million neighbours.
B> Decent to poor is generally the consensus I read and hear
I have no direct experience of the Canadian Health System. Here NHS
care varies from superb to poor, I've experienced both. Some people
here take out private insurance as a top-up. The knee surgeon I saw
privately works in one private hospital (a BUPA one, they're the
leading insurers here, they're non-profit) and 2 (I think) NHS ones.
The surgical skill is of course identical (!), the BUPA hospital's
almost certainly a more pleasant place to be an inpatient but it lacks
some of the facilities of the main NHS one.
Medical insurance here costs less than it does in the US, sometimes, a
lot less, because there are many things it doesn't need to cover.
(Full disclosure comment: the NHS in Wales, where I live, is
*a disgrace* -- it's run by the Welsh Assembly, not from Whitehall --
in that it has massive waiting lists. The English NHS is getting
better all the time.)
B> and I think
B> I'd call the health care system itself a boondoggle. The debacle of
B> treating health care as a right.
1. your second sentence is a non sequitur 2. I'd say health care is a
right, it is also in the interests of a nation (and its entrepreneurs)
to provide it just as it is in the interests of a nation (etc.) to provide
education (see the economic literature on "human capital")
>> (Canadian health cards, by the way,
>> fetch a pretty penny on your side of the border.)
B> Really? I can't imagine why.
I know people in the US who could tell you why. Just today I came
across the case of a man who lost his job when a factory closed and
pays $900 a month for a basic health insurance policy *and* $500 a
month for medication for his wife, who has a rare brain disease. The
story implied that if he didn't have that insurance, she'd be dead.
I told a man in New York some horror stories about the NHS here. He
has *very* good medical cover that comes with his job. He told me
about a few things that had happened there then said "Yes, I heard you
system was as bad as ours, now".
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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