The NHS

[clovehitched]

Word of this is getting around - apparently in order to discredit the, as I understand it ,somewhat limited reforms that President Obama is proposing for the US's very expensive, and not all that effective health care system, right wing pundits in the US have been using the NHS as a scare story about all the bad things that can happen under "socialised medicine". The problem is, they're not being overly accurate about their claims, with perhaps the most priceless example being this massive goof about Stephen Hawking, where it was claimed, by one publication, that he would have had no chance for survival had he been British.

Apparently the writer of the article in question didn't realise that Stephen Hawking is, in fact, British, and has been the recipient of quite a lot of NHS care. The article was hastily rewritten to remove any mention of Professor Hawking, but the Internet noticed and the epic LULZ are now spreading.

The Guardian (yes, I know) has noticed too, and if you feel like grabbing some popcorn the comments thread here makes for a wonderful piece of "can't stop looking at the car crash" style Internet browsing.

Anyway, I want to make a personal point. When I was eight years old I was walking home from school one day. I was crossing the road at the centre of this Google Maps page from north to south, to walk into the lane running south, which was part of my walk home. The school gates had those zig zag yellow "School, No Parking" lines on them, which were being duly ignored by the parents picking up my schoolmates. There was no pavement on the south side, so I had no choice but to cross there, and an illegally parked truck (I even remember whose parent it was parked there) was blocking my view along the road.

I edged out to look round, and at that moment I'm told someone stepped out from one of the garden gates on the opposite side. A car which was travelling along the road swerved to avoid them, and narrowly missed the truck I was peering out from round.

I experienced this as a screeching of brakes, at which point I guess I must have had a ton of adrenaline dumped into my system. Time slowed down, and I turned to face the sound. The world streaked across my vision, as if shot with a poor quality video camera with too much persistence, and I heard a bang. The lateral streaks of the world became a swirl, and in slow motion I watched the swirl as I turned upside down, and then felt a sharp pain as my left knee struck the asphalt. The swirl continued as I came to rest on my back, pretty much back where I'd started crossing the road, and then time returned to normal speed.

As it did, I felt a pain more intense than anything I've ever experienced in my stomach - far more pain than an eight year old should have to deal with. I looked up to see a circle of faces looking down at me. The events of the next 15 minutes are confused in my memory - someone ran home to get my mother, someone else came from across the street saying, "I've called an ambulance". Others were exclaiming that I was alive. Someone, perhaps the car driver, got me a blanket and laid me on it. My mother arrived in tears - I found myself consoling her (ah, irony). One of my teachers arrived and with my mother picked me up to move me back inside the school (I don't think this is recommended practice). As they did, the weight of my legs hanging below me made the pain intolerably worse, and I'm not quite sure how I managed to avoid passing out.

In due course an ambulance arrived. It took my to the Chesterfield Royal Hospital where I spent a week on the Nightingale Children's ward in a lot of pain, being fed through an IV line in my arm, feeling deeply sorry for myself. When it was clear that I didn't need to be hospitalised any longer, a week later (when I was able to eat food again and get out of bed), they allowed my parents to take me home. I spent several more weeks off school before returning, having made a full recovery. By some miracle I had "escaped" the impact of the car with "only" haemorrhaging into my stomach, despite the initial fears that my ribcage was smashed, that my lungs were punctured, that I might die. I guess I would have done without medical attention.

The car driver sent me a jigsaw in hospital - I understand he was really cut up about what had happened. It wasn't his fault - it was just one of those things.

Through all of this there were no insurance companies involved, nobody ever asked how the x-rays, the doctors, the medicine, the bed, etc. were to be paid for, no questions were ever asked about whether we had "coverage", they just sent an ambulance, took me into hospital, looked after me for a week, and got me back in a fit state to be sent home. When I was eight years old the system the US right wing wants to portray as some kind of socialist dystopian disaster simply did its job and saved my life.

So yeah, thanks for that NHS, and don't believe everything you see on the television, especially if there are political lobbyists involved.

Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/207629.html - you can comment here or there.

Comments

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this!

I saw today a photo of a placard which read:

You can only choose one:
[ ] Universal Healthcare
[x] Freedom

In the States, I get the sense that our notion of equality is antithetical to our notion of freedom. I wonder lately if this is due to an assumption that exchange value (a specific non-real entity) is the true source of equality. For the state rather than the market to mandate an entity of equality which isn't exchange value based, suddenly people start flipping shit about it being an unnatural replacement for the notion of market equality. How people can believe this while having enormous problems getting medical coverage is a mystery to me.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Well, quite. Similarly, when I was mashed up in Tanzania, my medical insurance flew me home, but it was the NHS that took care of me, with quality care.

I would not mind paying higher taxes in order to insure that we retain such a wonderful system, and I am sure that I am not alone in that.

[ailbhe]

When I was 19, I had a miscarriage. I bled very heavily for six weeks. I couldn't afford to see a doctor, and investigation showed the cost of A&E style care would also have been too high. I didn't know it was a miscarriage, of course. I spent a considerable portion of my budget on the Pill, so I was really surprised when I had my first confirmed pregnancy years later and realised that it wasn't my first really.

When my baby was 11 weeks old she stopped breathing. She and I were in hospital overnight for monitoring. It was nothing; she had baby sleep apnea, and a monitor that beeped when she stopped breathing managed it well until she outgrew it. No-one asked me to pay for a damn thing.

When I had PTSD and thought I might kill my baby, I had weekly visits lasting one hour each from the health visitors until I made it to the top of the waiting list for therapy and counselling.

When I had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic, and after a few can't-breathe hoops an *ambulance* came to monitor my breathing for fifteen minutes in case the reaction got bad enough to merit serious intervention (they had some needles handly, I don't know what was in them!). They were completely polite and poo-pooed my apologies (which they more or less had to lip-read) for having called them when not actually dead. They didn't ask me to pay for anything *even though I hadn't needed them in the end*.

I can't swear they saved my life - it's possible I might have survived a suicide attempt, for example. But they saved my daughter at least once, and perhaps twice.

[jasmine-koran.livejournal.com]

I had extremely severe asthma when I was a child. Some of my earliest memories are of waking up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe, and being rushed to the hospital. I remember sitting in a hospital bed, breathing pure oxygen through a mask strapped to my face, studiously working on a "M.A.S.H." colouring book one of the doctors had given me. We'd usually be there past the break of dawn. We were not charged a dime.

Funny, woulda thought I'd be euthanized or something. Weird, isn't it?

[angelofsith.livejournal.com]

I've always said that the NHS do a sterling job, even if they are under paid, under staffed, and over worked. If it wasn't for the NHS, well, I might not be here today.

[kajyann12.livejournal.com]

I help out occasionally on a support site for people who have had ostomy surgery for some reason. I would have died in 1992 if I had not had mine, and I know many people on different continents who are in the same position. Whereas, when I need supplies, I phone up a nice guy in Solihull and he delivers me all I need to make sure I can live happily, some of my compatriots in the US have to fight to obtain bags, and even then are limited as to how many they are allowed under the 'system'. Consequently we have people coming to us using 'ziplock bags and duct tape'(an actual quote), or asking us how they can re-use their bags.

How disgusting and humiliating is that? No-one should be put in that position - its like asking someone to re-use soiled toilet paper. The sooner the US gets a proper healthcare sytem the better - and I dont begrudge the NHS one penny of the money I pay.

kaj
xxx

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I seem to be one of very few Amerikans replying to this comment.
So let me state for the record, the country of my birth is full of assholes who are driven by fear and hatred rather then reason.

[fyremane.livejournal.com]

ive thought we needed a medical system closer to yours for a long time

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

There are unsubstantiated claims going around that "socialized medicine" (bring it on, I say!) would lead to "more bureauracy" and "longer waiting times".

Well, hell. I scheduled my annual checkup in March (March, mind you) and the soonest they could fit me in was JULY. The doctor said, when I told her my symptoms, "Why on earth did you wait so long?" and I said "This was the earliest I could get an appointment with you." She was horrified.

She also said, while we were going over my medical history, "I don't understand. What was your medical care between [year] and [year]? There's a blank." I looked her straight in the eye and said "I didn't have insurance." She looked back at me sadly. Point taken.

hooray for the NHS

[auslanderin01.livejournal.com]

In 2003 I worked in the national implementation team for the Independent Sector Treatment Centre programme, a £2.5bn initiative to bring in 100,000 privately provided routine operations alongside those provide by Acute Trusts (who took every opprtunity to rubbish the programme as, I believe, it threatened their cosy monopoly). I believed in the ISTC programme because I think the NHS needs a kick up the arse. I love the NHS but I hate its confusion, arrogance and complacency.

In 2001 I snapped my patellar tendon (the elastic band that connects one's quadriceps to the lower leg) not once but twice. I could've gone private but knew that A&E stuff is best dealt with by NHS surgery. Julian Jessop, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Watford General, did me up both times. Staying on an NHS ward kept my spirits up (I can't stand my own company). And the NHS physio that followed had me rapidly walking again. Together, they have left me with a knee joint that functions perfectly and a leg that is actually more flexible than its healthier companion. I have walked the width of Scotland on it: God bless the NHS!

Which is one of the reasons why I, quite blindly and with nothing more than a bloody-minded faith in the NHS, am sticking to CHX. I want to believe in the NHS because, like fairies in Peter Pan, I am worried if we stop believing, it will start to die.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I too owe the NHS my life. I had gastroenteritis as a baby and without the high dependency care I received, I would certainly have died. As a child of a working class family we couldn't have paid for the treatment. AND the family GP drove me to the hospital................

[kasumi-astra.livejournal.com]

I've thankfully never been in a life-threatening situation.

I'm now in the system of the Porterbrook GIC in Sheffield, and I've never felt more reassured than being told that I could expect to plan SRS sometime in 2010. Four years ago it seemed like the most remote possibility, and now it's been said to me in the most matter-of-fact way (obviously there are the usual disclaimers, but this is a completely new experience).

My brother had pneumonia when he was very young. I never knew how serious it was, and I still don't know most of the details, but it was serious enough to spend the night at a friend's house as my parents took him to the Royal Berkshire in Reading. I wasn't picked up until close to midnight. As serious as it was, my parents never had to worry about the long-term repercussions of my brother's treatment. The only question was: would he get better? He did, and today I can be grateful.

At the same time, I've seen the kind of money wasting that goes on in the NHS. I've followed AuntySarah's story with the Cambridgeshire PCT and I've worked in the National Program for IT. The NHS is hemorrhaging money at every level because it is so bad at valuing services.

I've also written to my own PCT who bluntly told me that funding for GICs in Sheffield is based solely on cost and "competing priorities" (read: high-profile treatments such as Cancer treatment) - no clinical need was evaluated. NHS managers can keep patients at arm's length and neglect their treatment to appease the tabloid media and middle England, and that makes me profoundly sad.

I've always wanted to make the kind of effort I've seen some transpeople make in the UK to improve services for transpeople in-particular, but always frustrated by not knowing what to do when hitting the brick-wall-effect.

But for now I'm proud and happy that I'm finally in the NHS system. I can echo sarahwilson01's feelings about wanting to believe in the NHS - I simply cannot afford not to. I believe people in Britain moan about what truly matters to them most, and I think the NHS is no exception. The events of this week have overwhelmingly shown what people will do to defend it - and good on them :-)

[moonspark.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of lower-income people in the US who have to worry all the time about health and affording the doctor.

I visited people in Canada who made approximately the same amount of money as my lower-income US friends. Never once did I hear them mention affording healthcare, even though one of them had sustained injuries at her workplace. They talked about not having /time/ to see the doctor, not not having money.

It was an interesting experience...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Deanna from th US first I would like to apologize for the undeserved bad press about you health system. Second my largest problem with all of this is why (in what we hope is a modern society) is a public need such as health care is a "for profit" system in the first place. I have no problem with the people working for the system the drug companies and the health care systems making a living. But the system should not be based on making a profit for the share holders but instead should be based on providing a service to its patients

[gkn.interbrainz.com (from livejournal.com)]

The car driver sent me a jigsaw in hospital - I understand he was really cut up

…into lots of little interlocking pieces?

To the anon poster

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment. I'm afraid I don't think I can unscreen it because it contains allegations which I worry might expose me (as a potential "publisher") to a possible libel action. However, I do wish you all the best and I'm sorry to hear about what you've been through.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Having been the recipient of health-care services in China, Russia, England, Japan, the States and Canada I would hazard to rank England the very best, Canada a close second, then Japan, Russia, the States and China in absolute last place.

America offers lots of shiny doo-dads and machines that go 'bing', but they also offer filthy wards, unspeakable loos on those wards, and constant demands for payment guarantees if not actual credit-card swipes.

Also, utterly off-topic, for GRS-related work, Japan is the very best (although in my day they only did secondary procedures like clitoroplasty and the like), England okay once you jump through the hoops, and Canada stuck somewhere in the Dark Ages.

Am presently in the States, where the radio programmes are full of scare-stories about nasty evil incompetent socialisitic public health-care systems. I just keep asking myself, "cui bono?".

[meegosh.livejournal.com]

I can stand up and be counted as someone who's received treatment at the NHS that wasn't "vital".

When I was diagnosed as being Turners as a small child they made a prediction of my height based on receiving growth hormones and not receiving them. Despite the years of horror that went with the daily injections I only came in at the predicted "without hormones" height. There wasn't that much between the two height ranges really. One just under and one just over the 5 foot mark. But the doctors thought it worth treating with expensive drugs. When puberty hit early (I had my first period at aged 10) they then took the decision to delay my puberty with hormones so that a little more height could be eeked out. It was thousands of pounds spend on treatment simply so I could potentially fit in better. There was the drugs themselves, the x-rays, the consultants' and my GP's time, the genetic tests, the ultra sound scans etc etc. And my parents only had to worry about finding the money for fuel to get me to appointments.

On the flip side. My grandmother had an emergency hip replacement back in March. She's back home (she refused to stay in hospital to die) but with being house bound, with little sight or hearing she's very confined. So my father decided to sort her out with a hearing aid so she could still listen to the radio and to audio books. The NHS GP insisted that to be checked for one she had to go to him. She can't get up and down the stairs into her flat, she can't get to an appointment at the GPs. Paying for a private consultation meant that someone came to her.