Summations Only

If you've lived in a country with universal, free healthcare you only get an idea what it would be like without it when you travel. The need to get medical insurance is an eye opener.We all have experience of insurance companies through household and car insurance and know how weasily they get when you need to claim - am I actually covered for this? I'd hate to be worrying about that when I'm driving to A&E with my child.I doubt that any democratic country has ever taken the decision to reverse universal healthcare once provided, it's value to the individual is just too high - politician tinker with it at their peril.The US's position is strange to an outsider - it seems to be a problem with the word 'social' rather than the principle of healthcare; it's a totem of rightwing machismo that anything called 'social' is actually communism in disguise so a line can be drawn.Perhaps liberal (another word generally regarded as a 'good' thing here but is perjorative in the US) politicians should rename the other things the state provides as services for all, Social Education, Social Defence, Social Highways, Social Street Lighting.....

I'm painting my 'Hands off my NHS' placard right now.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I'm claiming Poe here.

Would anyone like to rehearse the arguments against the motion whilst we await the arrival of someone with a relevant point of view?(Motion and Poe, a quixotic juxtapostion.)

i think that is generally correct, but here in the UK we do get regualr debates about whether a heavy smoker should receive treatment for a smoking related illness if they refuse to stop smoking, or receive a liver transplant if they carry on drinking. Fair and difficult questions.

In a world of perfectly matched supply and demand, there would be less to argue about. However, if there are two patients requiring a heart transplant, but only one heart. One is a smoker who refuses to give up whilst the other is a smoker that already has, a choice has to be made. In these cases, doctors are forced to make not so much moral decisions but clinical and economic decisions - providing the optimised good.

Nah, they occur to people who are old and whose hips, knees and ankles have crumbled. That's why enlightened societies have Falls Clinics for the elderly.

Syphilis

Here's the original statement of policy for the NHS, back in 1948. I think it's one of the world's great political achievements.That it meet the needs of everyone
That it be free at the point of delivery
That it be based on clinical need, not ability to payEdited by Tangle, : No reason given.