splitpeach wrote:Im not a medical professional so I don't know but I'm not convinced that people travel to the us for healthcare under any circumstances other than necessity. Either there's treatment there that is considered to be performed better than anywhere else or there is a treatment that is only performed there.
But that includes unproven treatment. American healthcare is about money (I don't know enough about Medicaid but that is apparently only available for the poor).
You can get a lot of research and trials because it is funded by interested parties. Ultimately for profit. You'll attract a lot of high level doctors and surgeons because they can charge a lot for healthcare there and make a lot of money. But that's the exact reason why it's not ideal for the patient.
If Medicare is only available to the poor then everyone else needs insurance. Which is obviously for profit. Now you're at the mercy of the insurance company to get your treatment approved. If not you're paying world leading surgeon attracting fees for your care.
Because the healthcare is private there is more incentive to market and offer less solid treatment options. And Ideally keep you coming back if possible. Either you or an insurance company will profit.
Universal healthcare, such as the NHS, eliminates all of that. No trust required, you're only offered treatments that have sufficient evidence of working. Obviously no payment issues. Anything that's not considered a clinical need is not available and that's where practioners can refer you to their private practice.
But it very much depends on the country and scheme. Wait times for elective surgery on NHS is bad. Put they have an obligation to get you seen and treated for urgent / time critical conditions naturally. But the healthcare offered is the best proven treatment available. It depends where you go and which consultant you see but you can typically get anything that's available privately on NHS if its proven. Like Prof Ralph offering all three major implant brands.
There's also a lot of research and trials taking place via NHS as it's a huge organization with vast resources. The goal is to offer world leading treatment (not necessarily care), where needed, for free.
Just look at how many papers and trials Prof. Ralph has been involved in.
I would consider getting private insurance in the UK but only in tandem with NHS and to have better facilities, accommodation etc if I were admitted long term or if long waits were really to be avoided. But I'd still get advice on NHS.
I've had it before where I would see a consultant at their private practice where they offer all kinds of treatments and scans etc to then see them on NHS where they're obligated to say that those options are unproven / ineffective.
That's been an interesting journey for me.
If USA had universal public healthcare it would truly be the best healthcare in the world. But its never gonna happen. Too much money involved.
The NHS is amazing and I'm sad that it looks to be dying from mismanagement, lack of appreciation, over liberalism and abuse.
I think you're overdoing it a bit with the profit component. Whether the UK doctor bills NHS or the US doctor bills private insurance they both do their jobs for profit, not for the love of men. I'd be surprised if NHS guarantees employment for local doctors and if doctor in the UK doesn't get enough patients he still wouldn't go belly up or be fired from his employment. Last time I checked the UK was still a capitalist country. The UK doctors do it as much for profit as the US doctors do.
We're not complaining about the quality of care here in the US. We're pretty content with that. There is only 1 debate in the country in regards to health care and that's the insurance debate. Our private insurance system seem to cost government more money than your NHS does because of our excessive unpaid usage of Emergency rooms, and limited incentives for preventive medicine. That wears very heavily on the US budget.
The way things look however, based on surveys and the polls the new more travelled and likely less well-off generation of Americans would eventually move to Universal Health Care. How it would effect quality of care is an open question. I don't think it would much. I suspect Chuck thinks otherwise. Americans are almost intuitively paranoid of any expansion of government, especially on such scale, so that naturally factors into the debate.
Also, people the world over are naturally conservative and resist changing "the way things are" because nobody really knows what those changes would really bring until they're implemented, and most intuitively focus on the worst case scenarios.
So far our insurance system works fine for greater majority.
However what our system also allows is for a person not to buy health insurance at all. This person might feel themselves invincible (some younger people do; back in the day I sure did). They choose not to prioritize purchasing insurance preferring instead to take few extra Caribbean vacations, or just spend their money on something else.
If or rather when those people finding themselves in trouble they go to ERs which costs much more than regular care and society usually ends up paying for their care anyway but at much higher rates than it would've under the Universal Health Care that would allow them to do a regular doctor visit instead.
Also, nursing homes. You pay out of pocket here until your assets are completely drained and then government steps in to pick up the bill. That means that no matter what - you will not end up on the street towards the end of your days. I believe much of the homeless problem is self-inflicted.
I know a girl who lives on the street. All she has to do is to file an application for free (or affordable) housing. She prefers hanging out with her friends who are in similar situation and complaining about her predicament instead. It's easy to get free food in America. Government would even provide you with some movie money to do other things. Sometimes poverty is a consequence of circumstance and poorly made decisions, other times it's a decease.
And just for the terminology sake... Medicaid is for the poor, Medicare is for the elderly here in the US. The two often overlap. It shouldn't be important to you since you don't live here but would help to know for reference.
64 yrs old.
ED since about 2000.
Just moved to Trimix from Edex.
Implant doctor shopping now.