Rudolph Giuliani is trying to raise his international profile in an attempt to get selected as the Republican candidate for the US presidential elections, but does so bu making stupid ill informed comments about the UK and the NHS.
He said today "I had prostate cancer seven years . My chance of survival in the US is 82%; my chance of survival if I was here in England is below 50%."
Of course Mr Giuliani had a higher chance of survival. He is a rich man. Perhaps we should ask Mr Giuliani what chance a poor worker in America has of surviving if they earn too much to qualify for medicare and too little to have private health insurance.
Of course the NHS has lessons to learn, but not from America, where good health care is not for the poor.
4 comments:
Health care in the States is good for the poor. It's a lie to say it isn't. Rudy was right. This is a silly post, N.
Well he's not fit for lots of reasons but this is not how to win friends and influence people. Especially as you say: health care is better in the US if you are rich or have good insurance, pretty bad if your are the working poor.
Will the NHS ever work well again?
No Nich, those are the survival rates across the US. Not just for the rich. His survival chances as a rich person are probably even higher.
Universal Healthcare would reduce the quality of US healthcare across the board. Its like making everyone poorer so you're all equal - it makes no sense.
The NHS is a pile of crap. It is expensive, offers poor quality of care (aside from the occasional anecdote) and doesn't offer a full range of treatments. That all costs lives.
Nobody is saying the US system is perfect, far from it. However the NHS leaves a lot to be desired and we should wrench ourselves away from worshiping it (Beveridge may have been a Liberal, it doesn't mean he was right though - something liberals should recognise - humans are flawed)
The American healthcare system operates to maximise profit rather than offer a system which caters to a patient's specific needs. In the US patients with benign brain tumours are usually treated with several sessions of gamma knife regardless of the tumour size. In the UK patients with small tumours undergo the gamma knife procedure, while those with larger tumours are operated on.
The gamma knife procedure is preferred in the US because it generates more profit (since it requires multiple sessions to be effective on larger tumours), even though it is a more timely procedure and may not be in the best interests of the patient.
The NHS is much better now than it was 10 years ago and healthcare in the UK would suffer indeterminably if it was privatised.
Post a Comment