In the UK we have a Health Service which is free to everyone who needs
it, apart from the payment for prescriptions which is subsidised, but
still expensive, but free to the elderly and free to the young and free
to those who can't afford to pay for it. There is free access to
doctors, free consultations, free medical examinations, free operations,
free hospital treatment. It may have its warts in term of waiting times
for certain operations and its failings due to a lack of money, and a
squandering of money, but nevertheless, everyone has access to it. It
is funded via a national insurance stamp which every employee and every
employer contributes to.
There are private hospitals of course and there are options to use
private insurance and to use private doctors where one pays for
everything, which is used mostly by rich people, but the rest of the
population gets its National Health Services for free. Dental treatment
at one time was also free, but nowadays lots of people have to pay for
it, though it is subsidised for some. Optical services and hearing
services have been hived off and passed to the private corporation, but
eye operations and hearing operations are still offered for free under
the NHS.
What I don't understand is why the United States, one of the most
advanced democracies and most powerful economies and industrial bases in
the world, which has a good record of profitability and productivity,
and which spends such huge amounts on its military industrial complex,
particularly in pacifying/dominating the rest of the world, with
military bases everywhere and trying to sell all of us the American way
of life and the American dream, can't provide the above services as part
and parcel of its every day living.
Lots of other countries manage it, particularly in Europe. What is it
about the American psyche that it cannot provide basic health services
for its population, because it is frightened that the good healthy guys
and gals, might somehow subsidise the lethargy and indolence of the
physically and mentally disabled, so making them even more indolent and
disabled. The logic escapes me...perhaps some kind, understanding US
citizen and colleague on this mailing list can explain to me why this is
so...
I mean, do you think that there is something, morally, or politically,
or philosophically wrong with free health and medical care for those who
need it? I just don't understand.
ATB
Dougie.
