Who says pharmacists are heartless?
I agree with Tufty, the free prescription rules in England are crazy (and I remember paying 2s. 6d. (12 1/2 p) for prescriptions in the good old days, regardless of how many items were on it).
I had a serious illness once - on drugs for the rest of my life. I had to buy a pre-payment certificate. More recently my wife also became seriously ill and she is now on drugs for ten years at least. She has to buy a prepayment certificate.
(Even so, the cost of a prepayment certificate represents a huge subsidy from the state.)
Then I got another illness - the kind you get when you're fat and lazy, the kind you can put off or avoid if you eat sensibly and look after yourself just a little. Boom! I get free drugs forever - not just for that illness, but for anything else I want to go down with too. Where's the logic?
================================================== =======
Now, reverting to Muskan's post and his reference to a video clip on YouTube, I can do no better than copy a couple of the comments made by people who watched that disgusting, one sided clip:
ArtificialCleverenAI said: "Nice agenda-driven expose of an apparent socialised healthcare failure. From my own personal experience within the UK and France, serious cases are referred to consultants within days. Having had a relative survive cancer, upon suspicion of the disease they were in specialist care within four days. It's a matter of record that the UK's health system is orders of magnitude better than the US's by survival count for such diseases and operations."
And povmcdov said: "In the NHS (UK) all patients with a suspected cancer are referred to a specialist within two weeks. The rural county I live in has at least 5 MRI machines covering 800K people. No waiting weeks for scans here. As a healthcare professional I would feel safer in the NHS than in the local private hospitals. If you want to skip the insignificant wait the NHS hospitals also provide private care, but you get the same treatment.
The NHS is not perfect but I would take it over the US system anytime."
I would add that it is totally fallacious - a deliberate lie - to say that the Ontario system of healthcare has crumbled away, simply because one person was dissatisfied. And, to be honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the people featured were put up to say what they did. People will lie for money, you know.
I don't know, but I've been told that the Canadian system is even better than UK's NHS.
However, SCGATOR2001 posted the following (on YouTube): "But make sure the GOVERNMENT stays out of your health care or else we'll get this OR WORSE! Government is the problem, not the solution. The gov't made mortgage companies lend to risky people (led by ACORN and the like) and they "almost" wrecked the economy.
Get them in US Healthcare and it will be more of the same. The gov't will make sure NONE of us have decent healthcare. That's socialism, CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!"
I think those remarks are echoed above by people here who oppose free healthcare. A few points then. If government is the problem, and it's staying out of healthcare, then surely it should get involved.
But that's just me being flippant.
What I don't understand is why Americans think that their Government will deliberately try to provide the lowest possible standard of healthcare, when you only have to look at the countries that do have subsidised or free systems to know that governments do their damnedest - and for the most part, with considerable success - to provide a first rate health service.
If they are right about the American system of government - and Americans should know, I suppose - then don't vote for politicians who say they will make sure only the richest will get medical treatment when they need it. Vote for someone who cares about his country and his countrymen's health, and who will promise to make free healthcare work.
And as for saying, "I give to charity, that's enough," let me remind you that there are very few social needs anywhere in the world at any time in history that have been satisfied by charitable donations. Often, social needs can only be met by the state. In my view, healthcare is one such need.
Free (or subsidised) healthcare is the jewel in the crown of any caring society, socialist, capitalist, or mixed. The absence of such a system tells me the society doesn't care at all. To turn the original question round, is it the case that each country gets the healthcare system it deserves?