CuriousWombat, a community nurse specialist in the U.K., shares her views on the health care debacle ...
"The wonderful misinformation I see about health care outside the USA would be hilariously funny if it wasn't so totally libellous."Infant mortality - out of 224 countries the USA is 44th. Your baby is more likely to survive if you live in somewhere like Sweden, Japan, Iceland, France, the UK, Anguilla, the Czech Republic, Wallis and Fortuna (!) Cuba - and 34 other places. The top ten ALL, as far as I can ascertain, have some form of National Insurance/ government financed health care system.
Life Expectancy - the USA has only the fiftieth best life expectancy in the world - and guess what? Most of the countries who beat you have socialised health care. Countries like Japan, Canada, France, the UK. Here on the Rock, with only one small National Health hospital and anything bigger requiring transfer by air to, well a UK NHS facility, we still have a better life expectancy...
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I've spent most of the day reading the stories collected over at Liz Marcs' journal. The contrast between U.S. so-called "health care" and the kind enjoyed by Canadians and U.K. residents (and others with national health care) is astounding and horrifying.
If you have any doubts (or even if not) go read the posts - one for
American experiences and one for the
experiences of those with national health care. Liz introduces and links them
here, and is still asking for personal stories - if you have anything to share, please do contribute! I highly recommend reading all the stories in comments, if you can bear it. As an American, it's immensely depressing, particularly as so many of our own citizenry, through ignorance and misinformation, remain, as CuriousWombat has put it, "afraid of good health care."
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Labels: health, politics
