Hello!

[LeftishBrit]

My country has had a single-payer system for over 60 years, for which I'm enormously grateful. But now it needs preservation from being at least diluted by the vile Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and his policies of partial privatization.

So I am here out of a desire to fight for the preservation of my system, and in solidarity with those fighting to establish one.

[jwirr]

1. Thank you. Your legislators need to remember that following the economic practices of the raygun

era (deregulation of the banksters) is what has the whole world in finacial ruin. It will do no good to continue down that path with austerity measures in the health care programs.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

2. Back in dear old Blighty, my friends and family get so much better health

than I do in the US, and I have insurance.

[murphyj87]

3. The same applies...

The same applies in Canada, where every single Canadian, rich or poor, young or old, gets far better health care than the average middle class American has.

Canada has a government funded, physician-run health care system where every Canadian can see a physician when they need to, and get whatever the health care that their physician says they need, in Canada.

The United States has an insurance-run health care system, where insurance company bureaucrats are wedged between Americans and American physicians. Insurance company bureaucrats decide which few Americans can see a physician when the need to. Insurance company bureaucrats, not physicians, decide which few Americans get treated, and what little treatment those few get, and how many million Americans will have to go to Canada to get the health care they need, since it is denied them by insurance company bureaucrats in the United States.

[Kennah]

4. I recall reading on the NHS website ...

... that injuries sustained in automobile accidents weren't covered under the NHS until about 1999. I'm curious, was there private insurance to cover things like injuries sustained in automobile accidents?

I worked for GE Healthcare for several years, during the failed National Programme for IT (NPfIT). I recall coworkers at times, almost frantic, over how "Our software won't work with universal healthcare! Tragedy!!!" I thought to myself, "Umm, think of it as just another insurance company. Duh. No big deal."

[LeftishBrit]

5. This is in fact incorrect

People injured in road accidents were always treated by the NHS, the same as those injured in any other way.

What did happen in around 1999, is that the government passed an Act which made it possible for the NHS to claw back more of the costs of dealing with such accidents from motor insurance companies. Such accidents cost the NHS a lot of money, and used to cost it even more before this law was passed. But the patients themselves were never charged.

[Kennah]

6. Ah, thank you for the clarification

That makes more sense, and the truth sometimes doesn't message well.