Help me with a speech. Describe your country's health care system.

[Dismal Dollie]

I know we have some folks from Canada, the UK, and Australia popping in here besides folks from other countries, and I'm thinking about writing a persuasive speech I have to do about converting the US healthcare system. I want to know about the healthcare you receive in your country, how it is paid for, how long you have to wait for services . . . I know some of you work for these organizations. How do you feel about your job and how your country runs it's healthcare organization? Americans feel free to write about your experience with our healthcare system.

I'm an uninsured college student. Because I pay a fee every semester, I get free visits at our local University Health Center, but I must pay for all medicines and testing. I normally get my annual pap smear and STI testing at the Health Department instead because it is much less expensive. What I do have to pay for at the Health Center is often very expensive. When I went to get treated for a UTI this August, I had to skip buying groceries that week so I could afford the testing fee and my anti-biotic prescription (it was three pills in the entire bottle). Thank God my boyfriend had food in his fridge. I waited a week knowing I had a UTI until I went to get treatment for it because I knew it was going to be very expensive. I wouldn't have gone at all if didn't have the Health Center fee because I can't afford a doctor's visit otherwise (75 to a 100 dollars a pop, normally. That's just to visit).

. . . obviously I feel like the poor are extremely disadvantaged with the system we have.

[Kute Kitty]

OK, I work in the UK, we have a National Health Service, and I work for them. The pay's crap. They're one of the largest employers in the country.

Seeing a doctor here is free. Any services they refer you to are free - including podiatry, therapy, speech therapy, audiology. Dentistry is partially charged for, and partly paid for by the state.

There are prescription charges in England. This is important - there's a difference between England and the UK. Wales and I think Scotland don't charge for prescriptions. England do. I assume Northern Ireland do. The standard charge is...£7-odd, per item. The cost of the average item is around £11. 80% of prescriptions are free though, because something about them makes them free. Contraception is always free. You can even get free condoms if you're willing to have the safe-sex lecture first. If you're on certain benefits, prescriptions are free - this includes job seeker's allowance and people in receipt of . If you have a chronic disease, for instance diabetes, which means you'll be on medication the rest of your life, your prescriptions are free. If you have cancer, they're not. This causes controversy, and not a little anger. Under-16s get all their prescriptions free. Under-19s who are still in full-time education get theirs free. Over 60s get their prescriptions free. If you're regularly taking more than 4 medications, you can also get a pre-paid prescription certificate - it's a bunch of money all at once, but it's cheaper than paying for each prescription individually. If you're pregnant, prescriptions are free - and so is all dental treatment. More info on charges is at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/Medicinespharmacyandindustry/Prescriptions/NHScosts/index.htm, if you're interested!

Dismal, if you were in the exact situation you are in now, but living in England, you would have to pay prescription charges - but it wouldn't be a choice of buying that or food. It might be a choice between that and a takeaway. You wouldn't have to pay for your smear or testing. You wouldn't have to pay to see a doctor.

I have worked for my local part of the NHS for three years. In that time we've changed names three times. My particular manager is very good, very strict on what we order and spend, and she looks out for us. There are other managers though, within the same organisation, who will let you spend anything, on anything, let you order the same thing two or three times over so things go to waste, and who really don't look out for their staff. That frustrates me, because it leads to the negative stories that are touted in the press just about every other week about the NHS overspending or underspending or not looking after their staff or something.

The NHS is absolutely slated in the media, all the time. We are a government-funded organisation and, as such, we have a finite amount of money to play with. When a new drug is released onto the market, it's copyrighted. No-one can make a generic brand of it for a set number of years, so that the manufacturer can recoup the money that they've spend on research and development. It takes several years to develop a new drug, and all a rival company would have to do is reverse engineer what the hard working company have done, and they can create the same thing for much cheaper. So, when a fancy new cancer drug comes on the market, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has to make a decision - does the benefit this drug can give justify the expense of it? It can come down to a basic numbers game, it's **** but it's the way it has to be, and people will lose out. The people will then go to the media, make a huge fuss, stage protests, sue the local primary care trust, the strategic health authority, the NHS, everyone and everyone they can, until they bully NICE into approving their treatment. In an ideal world, we would have enough money to afford all the medicine for all the people all the time. This is really really not a perfect world. NICE have to decide, is giving one person 5 more years worth denying a hundred people other life-saving treatment. I wouldn't want to work at NICE.

I started to ramble a bit there, but I hope some of that's helpful! Give a shout if you want something a bit more specific!

[Dismal Dollie]

Thank you! Your website was also very helpful!

What do you do and do you feel like healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, ect.) are underpaid? Do you feel that other countries have a better healthcare system or wish that certain aspects of other healthcare systems would be incorporated into yours?

[Kute Kitty]

I'm an administrator. I make sure everyone in the health centre has the equipment to do their jobs (from medication and syringes to pens and paper to write their notes on), I make sure any problems with the building are dealt with, and I generally try to make sure everyone's happy and law-abiding and the building doesn't fall down. It works, to some extent, most of the time.

Obviously, anyone doing any job feels that they are underpaid. That having been said, healthcare professionals working in private hospitals and practices are paid significantly more. Hospital doctors in particular will regularly do unpaid overtime, because otherwise patient care could be put at risk. I remember talking to one of the health care assistants (similar to a nurse, but not qualified - so OK to change dressings, take blood pressure, etc, but not to administer medication) when my mum was in hospital last year, and he told me that his shift had actually finished two hours previously, but he was still working. This wasn't unusual for him. In the area I'm actually involved in, which is primary care (your local GP) as opposed to secondary care (the hospital), a lot of people argue that doctors are actually overpaid. These are people who don't work with them. GPs are paid a set amount by the health service, which they then distribute within the surgery - so, maintaining their building, making sure their equipment is up to scratch, paying their staff, etc etc. They also regularly work 10- or 12-hour days, 5 days a week; seeing patients, referring patients, giving people wonderful news one minute and telling them they're going to die iminently the next. It's a bitching hard job, and I would say that they are underpaid.

The nurses I work with on a daily basis will start at 7.30 or 8 o'clock (and start being paid at 8.30), work half their lunch (unpaid) and finish at 5.30 (and finish being paid at 5). For the amount of work they put in, I would say that they are woefully underpaid; and they can't cut back and only work the hours they're paid for because, once again, patient care would suffer.

I have heard that France has one of the best health care systems in Europe, but I don't know enough about their system to comment on it. If you check out Michael Moore's film Sicko, I've heard (not seen it myself - had the chance but already had plans) that that comments on France's system.

From a personal point of view as a patient, I do think that the prescription charges are a little too high. The charge is per item so, if I'm prescribed two or three items at one time and it's a couple days before pay day, I have to decide whether to fill it straight off or wait a few days and risk getting sicker. I also feel very strongly that the presciption charge should be waived on all drugs prescribed for cancer. I know that some drugs can be prescribed for cancer and for other things, but some kind of exemption certificate that has to be renewed by the GP every 6 months or so should be possible - or a list which the regular pharmacy could hold saying which drugs this patient has for free (so if they're prescribed antibiotics for something unrelated they would have to pay for that).

[maypoldncer]

This is a big issue here in US and it is not getting any smaller. Our healthcare system to say with minimal words SUCKS!!! I have lost many friends to cancers and other illnesses and because of the lack of healthcare or no healthcare at all, they were denied care, pain medicines, and even chemothearapy. It is a sad situation that only seems to be getting worse. I truly hope that whom ever gets elected in November as our next president will finally take this issue seriously and make some much needed changes. Many families today here in the US live paycheck to paycheck, and all it takes is for any one family member having to go to the doctor or hospital to put them behind in rent and it trickles down from there, and before they know it they are homeless.

[durgarox]

heathcare, welfare, social privilege, hegemony=
fail