Starting with a bit of a backlog of my gripes, but still a relevant and hot issue where the debate continues over the Atlantic:
I don't really know where to start on the healthcare bill, because I simply do not understand the opposition. Firstly, I can't understand why healthcare was ever a private industry. Making money off curing disease and illness, treating people back to health after accidents and protecting them from future risks doesn't just seem illogical or wrong, it is pure evil. Healthcare, along with local and national security, rescue services and insurance, should be a public industry. Remember it's not simply a situation of "pay for what you need" because there's also a lot of shareholders sat at the top taking a nice cut, and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if a few of those guys were republican senators and almost all of them republican voters.
When the debate kicked off, I saw a Tory MP on Fox News telling the yanks just how bad the NHS is: waiting times, a sub-standard care etc. Now, all of us here in the UK have our gripes with the NHS - I personally have no issue with the standard of care, yes it could be better but it's FREE, so no matter what ailment I have or accident I get into, the burden of cost is shared by the rest of the nation. If you're not happy to chip in for the cost of treating someone for a condition which is particularly costly, then I'm afraid you are indeed evil. The more important point being the comparison between the NHS waiting times and HAVING NO HEALTHCARE. It seems very strange for someone to say to the 10 - 47 million* Americans that don't have healthcare that they'd be better off without state funded healthcare because it would involve long waiting times. In short, longer waiting times > no healthcare, on an infinite scale. Surely if you're looking at the greater gain to the USA (greatest country in the world apparently), which is the role of congress as far as I understand it, then you need to take the opportunity to maximise the overall health of your population?
The states also spend around twice as much as most other western countries on healthcare, yet according to the World Health Organisations list of countries by healthcare http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html, last updated in 2000, they ranked 37th in the world. That's below France, The UK, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Costa Rica to name just a few. Now I understand that the amount actually spent on healthcare is probably the same as everyone else because of the vast amount of profit earned by the shareholders for the healthcare care and insurance companies, but really, 37th!?
So Obama had to buckle to compromise with the republican majority, but at least things are now moving forward so that a vast number of Americans now have healthcare cover. That's right, for the greatest country in the world it's a massive step forward when everyone has healthcare. I wish they understood quite how crazy that sounds to the rest of the western world.
*The number without healthcare is largely debatable, as many of the usually quoted 47 million are citizens and many can afford it but opt out. However "can afford but opt out" is an interesting phrase as a lot of people may have theoretically been able to afford healthcare but had to endure a much lower standard of living.
I don't really know where to start on the healthcare bill, because I simply do not understand the opposition. Firstly, I can't understand why healthcare was ever a private industry. Making money off curing disease and illness, treating people back to health after accidents and protecting them from future risks doesn't just seem illogical or wrong, it is pure evil. Healthcare, along with local and national security, rescue services and insurance, should be a public industry. Remember it's not simply a situation of "pay for what you need" because there's also a lot of shareholders sat at the top taking a nice cut, and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if a few of those guys were republican senators and almost all of them republican voters.
When the debate kicked off, I saw a Tory MP on Fox News telling the yanks just how bad the NHS is: waiting times, a sub-standard care etc. Now, all of us here in the UK have our gripes with the NHS - I personally have no issue with the standard of care, yes it could be better but it's FREE, so no matter what ailment I have or accident I get into, the burden of cost is shared by the rest of the nation. If you're not happy to chip in for the cost of treating someone for a condition which is particularly costly, then I'm afraid you are indeed evil. The more important point being the comparison between the NHS waiting times and HAVING NO HEALTHCARE. It seems very strange for someone to say to the 10 - 47 million* Americans that don't have healthcare that they'd be better off without state funded healthcare because it would involve long waiting times. In short, longer waiting times > no healthcare, on an infinite scale. Surely if you're looking at the greater gain to the USA (greatest country in the world apparently), which is the role of congress as far as I understand it, then you need to take the opportunity to maximise the overall health of your population?
The states also spend around twice as much as most other western countries on healthcare, yet according to the World Health Organisations list of countries by healthcare http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html, last updated in 2000, they ranked 37th in the world. That's below France, The UK, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Costa Rica to name just a few. Now I understand that the amount actually spent on healthcare is probably the same as everyone else because of the vast amount of profit earned by the shareholders for the healthcare care and insurance companies, but really, 37th!?
So Obama had to buckle to compromise with the republican majority, but at least things are now moving forward so that a vast number of Americans now have healthcare cover. That's right, for the greatest country in the world it's a massive step forward when everyone has healthcare. I wish they understood quite how crazy that sounds to the rest of the western world.
*The number without healthcare is largely debatable, as many of the usually quoted 47 million are citizens and many can afford it but opt out. However "can afford but opt out" is an interesting phrase as a lot of people may have theoretically been able to afford healthcare but had to endure a much lower standard of living.
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