Exactly. There are horror stories everywhere, and the American rich who have no problem paying for their care have been having a ball digging them up. The NHS does have it's faults with waiting lists, but our care is free and effective.
Interestingly, I've been living in Taiwan for a few years now, and it surprised me when I arrived that Taiwan has a national health care service that is run in a similar fashion to the NHS, and very likely to the French system too. I pay a monthly inexpensive sum, and my employer is expected to contribute too - similar to national insurance payments that would come out of my pay in the UK. This covers visits to the doctor and the hospital, and all I'm expected to pay is a prescription fee. This fee is the same cover charge regardless of what is wrong with me, much like the prescription fee charged in the UK.
What I do find scary is stories of people who've moved to America and have found that the 'insurance' they thought would cover them, only covers them up until the point they actually get sick. In the end, they've had to rely on charities and other such institutions in order to pay the bill they get sent in the post. We get nothing like that in the UK. The prescription fee is the only time money will change hands, and is currently about £7.70 (they don't pay it in Wales) and, as always, I find it horrific that America is a country that is determined to make it easier to kill people - the sheer lack of gun laws, Iraq, Afghanistan - than to keep them alive.
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Exactly. There are horror stories everywhere, and the American rich who have no problem paying for their care have been having a ball digging them up. The NHS does have it's faults with waiting lists, but our care is free and effective.
Interestingly, I've been living in Taiwan for a few years now, and it surprised me when I arrived that Taiwan has a national health care service that is run in a similar fashion to the NHS, and very likely to the French system too. I pay a monthly inexpensive sum, and my employer is expected to contribute too - similar to national insurance payments that would come out of my pay in the UK. This covers visits to the doctor and the hospital, and all I'm expected to pay is a prescription fee. This fee is the same cover charge regardless of what is wrong with me, much like the prescription fee charged in the UK.
What I do find scary is stories of people who've moved to America and have found that the 'insurance' they thought would cover them, only covers them up until the point they actually get sick. In the end, they've had to rely on charities and other such institutions in order to pay the bill they get sent in the post. We get nothing like that in the UK. The prescription fee is the only time money will change hands, and is currently about £7.70 (they don't pay it in Wales) and, as always, I find it horrific that America is a country that is determined to make it easier to kill people - the sheer lack of gun laws, Iraq, Afghanistan - than to keep them alive.
October 9, 2009 - 12:48pmThis Comment
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