Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/03/brits-freak-out-when-told-the.html
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Pretty much, poppet.
Hell, I’m from here, I’ve been working poor most of my life… and I’m still freaking out about the ridiculously exorbitant cost of American “health care.”
It’s a travesty.
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Nah. Greatest country on Earth…amirite ammosexual right wing conservatives!!!
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A handful of two-digit billionaires are getting richer by keeping healthcare as it is in the US.
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Libertarians keep going on about how government attracts rent-seekers. What the hell is the US healthcare industry except people charging a life rent?
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What’s the point in having an appendectomy if you can’t brag about how much it costs?
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She’s right - we really don’t care much about people’s health or their going broke on top of having a serious illness.
OTOH - they do have more terfs than any other first world country…
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It’s not health care, it’s health extorsion.
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In 2017 in the US, healthcare “expenditure” per capita was $10,224.
In the UK it was $4,035 at the worst exchange rate of that year.
That’s a noticeable delta.
One way to compare quality of care:
US Infant mortality rate, 2017=5.8 per 1000 live births
UK Infant mortality rate, 2017=3.9 per 1000 live births
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They will probably freak out more when they start seeing those prices themselves. Because they seem to have no problem with voting in people that are sworn to make it happen.
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That was part of the pitch.
Seriously “an American style healthcare system” is one of the things the pro Brexit side has been pushing as a positive thing Brexit can provide. Conservatives in the UK and Ireland like to bandy about “American healthcare” as a good thing. Because it’s loaded with CHOICE. And there’s NO WAITING. And your job just gives it to you. So no taxes!
My cousin in Dublin couldn’t stop going on about it last time he was over. He’d just made it through a serious bout of kidney cancer, and knew full well that had he been in the US he’d have gone bankrupt pursuing treatment. And probably would have died anyway.
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This is such a concise way to frame the conversation. Thank you, Mark.
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NHS in Britain will be DOA the second Brexit happens, Boris has planned this from the get go with the USA health insurance mafia. Have fun my English friends…
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“Medical bankruptcy” and “school lunch debt” are insanely fantastical concepts in civilized societies.
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They just hate our freedom. 
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You should look at that infant mortality rate but in Mississippi and Arkansas.
MS is 8.6 per 1000. There are third world countries with better infant survival than some US states.
It’s not accidental. It’s by design. Capitalist ideology doesn’t value human life aside from how profit can be extracted. There is no ethical capitalist healthcare system. Capitalism and human wellbeing are at best orthogonal, and often diametrically opposed.
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Oh, there’s other bad actors at play in human wellbeing, in fact many.
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Drama! My brother’s appendectomy sent him into muscle spasms, his temperature skyrocketed, and his heart stopped.
However, the simple appendectomy operation was being done by the Chief Surgeon of Toronto General, and he just happened to be friends with the leading research doctor, at the time, into Malignant hyperthermia. He recognized the signs, got my brother into an ice bath, heart injection, defib? Bam!
Of course, the medical costs completely destroyed the rest of the family … Oh wait, they didn’t!
Oh heck. Thank you Doctor Britt, leading research doctor, who saved my brother by proxy.
https://www.anesthesia.utoronto.ca/news/memoriam-dr-beverly-britt
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She gets it!
Yeah, every time I think I’m jaded about the absurdities of American health care costs, something new always comes along to surprise me. In this case, it feels like they kind of undersold things, as there are plenty of expenses in healthcare that go into substantial fractions-of-millions of dollars, or simple but grossly inflated costs, like the $60 plastic drinking cups, that maybe aren’t average but exist. (Though that ~$40 fee for mothers to hold their own babies is a pretty good example. It was one of those things that briefly scandalized me when I read about it.)
They seriously need to see things like this video, and frequently. People in civilized countries have no idea of the horror because it’s simply inconceivable in their frame of reference.
Or with black women in any state (and all income/education levels). A researcher in the '80s suggested it was due to racism and got absolutely demolished by the medical establishment, which insisted it had to do with poor health, obesity and lack of education. Recent research controlled for the various other possible causal factors and concluded that, yup, actually it’s racism alright.
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