The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

I've been wanting to ask this question for some time now. I've heard different things in the news over here in the US. So I thought I'd just ask you all.
As you know if you've been following the news, we are in the process of taking the power away from the greedy institutions that run our health care system. We have no anti-trust laws on health care and it's gotten way out of hand.
Our political leaders in Washington D.C. want to fuss and dicker about what's right and what's not. We have one party that fights the other when their party has the office of President, and vise ver sa. It's a never ending battle of politics, instead of doing what's right for our fellow man.

How does it work in your part of the world, do you have to pay for this care and if you do how much does it cost. When I went into the hospital a little while back I had to pay $1068.00 just to get in. My wife has no health care at all because of a preexisting illness. I'd have to be super wealthy to buy it for her, and I'm not.
Do you all have what there calling here, "a public option?"
I'm just curious after hearing some things on the news about Europe have great health care, is this true?

We pay around 8% of our earnings into a scheme called National Insurance.

In theory that covers us for health care for life and gives us a basic state pension.

All my basic medicine, doctor and hospital treatments come out of this. In my early years I paid in and had nothing out but am using it a bit now.

If I needed urgent treatment it would be covered but, say, I needed hip or knee replacement and the waiting list was long for treatment, I could pay for it privately and "jump the queue". This is a bit naughty as the same hospital and surgeon would do the job and so the people who could not afford to pay would move further back down the list.

Our dental treatment can be either National Health or private. We are private as, changes to the system by the government caused a number of dentists to leave the system and the only way we could continue to have dental treatment was to pay for it.

Spectacles again can be either private or National Health. Being diabetic, I get my eye tests free but have to pay for the glasses and lenses.

So our system is a bit of a mixture.

Hello,

We have quite a difficult system to explain in English here in Holland.

Basically, it is as follows:
- We must insure ourselves by a insurance company for health care
- The government has set the minimum level of medical care the insurance must cover
- You can buy extra cover at the company, which will cost you extra
- Insurance companies compete on price level and on the coverage in the basic insurance
-Companies may not reject you as their client.
- People with lower incomes, can receive a subsidy for their healthcare insurance costs. This subsidy is payed by the tax department.

In my opinion this system is OK, but is quite a new system, introduced in 1996 and I have not been ill. Which I'm quite happy with off course.

More information (in english) can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare ... etherlands

Best regards

Emiel

Thanks Emiel,
I went to the wiki, and this is very similar to what I've been hearing on the news.
What about medication is this covered in the plan, I couldn't understand the medical language in the wiki that well. Or is it in another plan that has to be purchased separately?

Brian wrote:
If I needed urgent treatment it would be covered but, say, I needed hip or knee replacement and the waiting list was long for treatment, I could pay for it privately and "jump the queue". This is a bit naughty as the same hospital and surgeon would do the job and so the people who could not afford to pay would move further back down the list.

Our dental treatment can be either National Health or private. We are private as, changes to the system by the government caused a number of dentists to leave the system and the only way we could continue to have dental treatment was to pay for it.

Spectacles again can be either private or National Health. Being diabetic, I get my eye tests free but have to pay for the glasses and lenses.

So our system is a bit of a mixture.

Brian,
If you had to pay for knee replacement (God forbid) and did the jump ahead way you described would the government reimburse you the money you spent?
I've yet to hear if spectacles are going to be in our plan, or meds.
You didn't mention medication, do you pay for that or is there a plan for that as well?

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the situation in Finland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Finland

A potted description of the UK National Health Service (NHS):

If I think I might be ill, my 1st port of call is to visit my General Practitioner (GP) at my local surgery who hopefully can fix me with something simple, pills etc. This is free exc I may have to pay for pills etc.

If my GP thinks I need to see a hospital consultant /doctor eg for hospital treatment, my GP 'refers' me to a suitable hospital specialist for which I have to wait in a queue which may be weeks. When the time comes, the specialist offers/arranges whatever treatment/operation he thinks best. Again there may be a queue which has to be <18weeks or the hospital gets fined. Again treatment is free to me.

Untill recently there was little or no choice as to which specialist/hospital I went to. Usually it was the nearest 'suitable' hospital. In the past year or so a new system called 'Choose & Book' has come in, in which your GP gives you a booking number (which is effectively a pot of ££money ) and a list of possible hospitals. I go on the computer, look at all the hospitals on the list eg for waiting times, and book the hospital/specialist of my choice. In theory if I my GP agrees, I could choose to go to any specialist/hospital in the UK, again free to me.

This is a great system as it effectively means all hospitals are competing for National Health patients and has I'm sure sharpened up the UK hospital system. Increasingly the NHS is using private hospitals to treat NHS patients (again free to patient). I read that the cost of surgery is actually falling in UK because of increased competition between hospitals and cheaper ways of doing things, eg day surgery with no stay in hospital.

As Brian alluded, with my GP's agreement I can do some queue jumping by paying a smallish sum to see a specialist privately who can usually slot me into his NHS queue for free treatment, thereby saving weeks even months in being treated. Sounds naughty but apparently perfectly 'legal'.

Conclusion: UK NHS is undoubtedly expensive to run & I suspect overly bureaucratic. Worst feature is that queues can be long especially for non-emergencies. But it does enable everyone however poor, particularly as we get older to get treatment and for that reason I and probably the vast majority of UK citizens say it is a 'good thing'. The widespread availability of broadband computing is enabling patients to be much better informed, which is sharpening up the medical profession, and giving us more choice in treatment under the NHS.

Question for Welsh folks: Is 'Choose & Book' available in Wales yet?

Best thing is not to get ill. Here's to good health

PS UK system not dissimilar to the Finland system meantioned^

Mark,

The medication is mostly part of the insurance, sometimes we must pay 10 or 20% from the price and some medication is not insured but that mostly experemantal.

The last 2 years I spend a lot of time in the Hospital (ca 15 times)and take lots of medication but It did cost me just my insurance and the own risk.

Iff I had to pay it for myself I would have lost all I have.......

Everyone,
What happens if someone has an emergency, eg. a heart attack and need, some type of surgery, I know they couldn't be put at the end of the line, so I guess that just makes the line longer? What happens if you are in line for a surgery of some sort and you are having complications and need your surgery sooner, what happens?

In my case It was not a Heart attack but it looked like it, so I went to the ER and then I was transported to a specialized hospital for Heart surgery it was on a sunday at ca 18.00 and 3 hours later I was on the Table for surgery, it didn't work so I went several times back to the hospital for a cardioversie to make it better, up to last june when I got the big operation (4 houres anaesthesia) and now its like new. Iff my heart gets now out of his rithem (like a diesel out of time) I must go to the hospital and the next day I get the cardioversie (like a shock from a AED) sorry for the bad wordt but I dont know all the Englisch words

Lines are a bit longer but the worst people (who are in the hospital) are first

Mark wrote:Everyone,
What happens if someone has an emergency, eg. a heart attack and need, some type of surgery, I know they couldn't be put at the end of the line, so I guess that just makes the line longer? What happens if you are in line for a surgery of some sort and you are having complications and need your surgery sooner, what happens?

Mark,
In UK if you have a medical emergency you will be treated straightaway - free. The queues relate to non-emergencies and as I said above if you wait more than 18weeks for anything, the hospital gets fined by the Government.

Regarding paying for medicine, in Uk you pay a contribution for medicines unless you are very poor, pregnant, diabetic, suffering from cancer, over 60... who pay nothing. There have been cases when patients have not been allowed some very expensive usually experimental medicines which have attracted adverse press coverage. So paying for medicines is not something most of us worry much about in UK.
It's a good system costly to the nation, but by and large works well. You should vote for it!
All the best,

In England, it's not what you go into hospital for, it's what you catch whilst you're in there that's the problem. C- Dif? MRSA anyone? The NHS, like England itself, is just about finished.

On the subject of health .. I had a total and complete chronic health melt down. I was virtually house bound for 2 years and 2 years after that I was up and about but still extremely ill. I found out I had some dental issues destroying my health. But virtually every dentist and doctor I went to said I had no problems, and I saw a lot of people. Eventually I paid privately to the only dentist/surgeon in the entire country that could fix my problems. I had a special ultra sound on my jaw, there are only 2 of these in the country (UK). Then I had surgery to open up my jaw and remove all the dead bone. Sounds extreme but it fixed me.

People have no idea procedures like root canal or amalgam fillings can actually kill them. And I say that literally. If you have root canals, there is a high probability they will rot your jaw bone..

This is what root canal can do


And this nightmare doesn't show up on x-ray so conventional dentists can and never will find these problems. Also because they kill the actual bone, you wont feel any problems at all.

Heres a fun video on amalgam fillings if you are unlucky enough to have any.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylnQ-T7oiA

Ian wrote:On the subject of health .. I had a total and complete chronic health melt down. I was virtually house bound for 2 years and 2 years after that I was up and about but still extremely ill. I found out I had some dental issues destroying my health.

Ian,
I suppose most of us older people will have these fillings in our teeth, but don't know about the mercury in them. I'll ask my dentist the next time I'm there about this.
How did you find out about the dental issues, you didn't say?

Does your health care in your country cover this?
I'd like to go to Washington DC and take away all their insurance coverage, and see if that wouldn't get them to work on straightening our problem out quicker.
Glad you are feeling better.

I had a lot of pain in the lymph nodes mostly down the left side of my neck. It got so bad that my underarms started swelling up and the skin would peal off. Lymph nodes normally react locally to the site of the infection so I knew I had an infection somewhere close, it was just a matter of finding it.

On the subject of metal fillings..

the world health organisation says this

In 1991, the World Health Organization confirmed that mercury contained in dental amalgam is the greatest source of mercury vapour in non-industrialized settings, exposing the concerned population to mercury levels significantly exceeding those set for food and for air

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_hea ... 230506.pdf

Translation, if you have amalgam fillings and your mouth was a place of work, you'd be condemned under EPA laws. lol

Lovely stuff mercury! If you dropped it on the floor of the packing room we had to clear everything out to find those nasty little balls. It can enter the body through the finger nails so we were told.

My father was given a dose of mercury to drink around 1916/17 to clear constipation according to legend! It killed him in the end but he was 98!

I remember when I was a young boy, my dad was cleaning his shotgun, he had a bottle of mercury in his kit. I remember it rolling around in little balls like Brian described. He poured it in my hand and to me as a child it was fun to watch it roll around without it getting on your hand. Little did we know how dangerous this chemical was at time. You live and learn as you grow older.

I've been thinking about how mercury works, and I don't have a clue.
What did you use it for in your work shop Brian?

For the life of me I can't figure how mercury would be used in cleaning a shotgun.