"British fear 'American-style' healthcare system"

stuffsickpeoplehavetoputupwith:

Two years ago, Britons were outraged when U.S. politicians like Sarah Palin, in the debate over healthcare reform, turned this country’s National Health Service into a public whipping boy, denouncing it as “evil,” “Orwellian” and generally the enemy of everything good and true.

It’s time for some payback.

Britain is now embroiled in a healthcare argument of its own, prompted by a proposed shake-up of the NHS. And the phrase on everyone’s lips is “American-style,” which may not be as catchy as the “death panels” that Palin attributed to socialized medicine but which, over here, inspires pretty much the same kind of terror.

Ask a Briton to describe “American-style” healthcare, and you’ll hear a catalog of horrors that include grossly expensive and unnecessary medical procedures and a privatized system that favors the rich. For a people accustomed to free healthcare for all, regardless of income, the fact that millions of their cousins across the Atlantic have no insurance and can’t afford decent treatment is a farce as well as a tragedy.

[…]

So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice.

“We will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be moving towards an insurance scheme, we will not introduce an American-style private system,” Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically told a group of healthcare workers in a nationally televised address last week.

In case they didn’t hear it the first time, Cameron repeated the dreaded “A”-word in a list of five guarantees he offered the British people at the end of his speech.

“If you’re worried that we’re going to sell off the NHS or create some American-style private system, we will not do that,” he said. “In this country we have the most wonderful, precious institution and also precious idea that whenever you’re ill … you can walk into a hospital or a surgery and get treated for free, no questions asked, no cash asked. It is the idea at the heart of the NHS, and it will stay. I will never put that at risk.”

This goes out to everyone who has never traveled abroad or spoken with anyone outside of the U.S., yet still likes to bandy about the claim that Brits and Canadians “wish they had our system.”

No, they don’t. Stop spreading lies.

(via socialuprooting)

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   Ugh, I, hate our health care system.A conservative group called me and said the new health care reform was socialist,...

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11. king-koschei reblogged this from gavinsaurusrex and added:

    I honestly with I had the NHS of Britain in the USA.

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    They aren’t exactly doing much to save the NHS we have though! They are fucking us over left right and centre.

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17. jascollins reblogged this from 3liza and added:

    I SO wish to live in an “Orwellian” system that DOESN’T ALLOW PEOPLE TO WANDER AROUND SICK UNTIL THEY CAN SAVE UP...

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    PLEASE READ THIS!- Jihan

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28. notquiteamarxist reblogged this from moderateblogger and added:

    I wish we had their system. I support socialized medicine!

29. alectointhunderland reblogged this from robot-heart-politics and added:

    I can’t think of a single European I know who isn’t horrified at the thought of the US system. It’s scary to us, the...

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    Hellooooooooo truth

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    Dear UK, don’t do it. Don’t privatize medicine. It will destroy you the same way it is destroying us - we’re just too...

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    Only their conservatives…who like ours are corrupt. And those are only politicians not voters. Tony Blair and the new...

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    And oh man, it’s probably worse than you could imagine. For years, my partner and I have had to make employment...

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    “British fear ‘American-style’ healthcare system” - Los Angeles Times...Two years ago,...

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