Sicko

Saw it last night.

I thought it was very good, though a little sensationalist in places. Still one of the best documentary-ish type things he's done.

It was very odd seeing an American's view of our National Health Service; especially since we seem to spend a lot of our press space complaining about it.

Still having seen the alternative, I for one, count myself very lucky. Though not as lucky as the French and Cubans apparently ...

As long as you don't need a sticking plaster, then Cuba's an excellent place to fall ill. They have all the training, but none of the materials.

Likewise, as long as you only want to read, Cuba's fantastic... If you want to write something, then be prepared to wait in a long line for a pen. (I kid you not. And we could only find one shop selling pens too, whereas literally dozens sold books.)

I have to agree about the NHS.  Yes, they get slagged off by the press and public, but when you need them, they are there.

I recently had a heart attack (minor), and went to my local hospital A&E thinking it was indegestion.
I was rushed straight in for a barrage of tests, then admitted to the Coronary Care Unit.  4 Days later (I was admitted on the weekend, no consultants), I was transferred to another hospital where I had an Angiogram and had 2 stents fitted.  I was out on  the Thursday.

Throughout my stay, I was impressed with the professionalism and the humour of the nursing staff.

What did this stay and operation cost me personally?... £2.90 for the patientline crap at the bedside so I could watch TV whilst lying still for 5 hours!

(For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Patientline is a system that provides TV, Telephone and Internet services at the bedside in hospitals - the internet service is rubbish, based on Windows CE from what I could see when I crashed the system , and the service is generally a rip off).

I really does sadden me that the nurses get such pathetic pay for the job they do.

RobbieCrusoe wrote:

I have to agree about the NHS.  Yes, they get slagged off by the press and public, but when you need them, they are there.

I recently had a heart attack (minor), and went to my local hospital A&E thinking it was indegestion.
I was rushed straight in for a barrage of tests, then admitted to the Coronary Care Unit.  4 Days later (I was admitted on the weekend, no consultants), I was transferred to another hospital where I had an Angiogram and had 2 stents fitted.  I was out on  the Thursday.

Throughout my stay, I was impressed with the professionalism and the humour of the nursing staff.

What did this stay and operation cost me personally?... £2.90 for the patientline crap at the bedside so I could watch TV whilst lying still for 5 hours!

(For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Patientline is a system that provides TV, Telephone and Internet services at the bedside in hospitals - the internet service is rubbish, based on Windows CE from what I could see when I crashed the system , and the service is generally a rip off).

I really does sadden me that the nurses get such pathetic pay for the job they do.

I agree with everything you said. I have only needed to be treated once in hospital, but the food was great, the staff was excellent and I couldn't fault the after care.

And I remembered how well I had been treated when I watched that woman being dumped on the sidewalk in a hospital smock, because she couldn't pay her bill.

Damn that s**t better not happen here.

Ray6 wrote:



RobbieCrusoe wrote: I have to agree about the NHS.  Yes, they get slagged off by the press and public, but when you need them, they are there. I recently had a heart attack (minor), and went to my local hospital A&E thinking it was indegestion. I was rushed straight in for a barrage of tests, then admitted to the Coronary Care Unit.  4 Days later (I was admitted on the weekend, no consultants), I was transferred to another hospital where I had an Angiogram and had 2 stents fitted.  I was out on  the Thursday. Throughout my stay, I was impressed with the professionalism and the humour of the nursing staff. What did this stay and operation cost me personally?... £2.90 for the patientline crap at the bedside so I could watch TV whilst lying still for 5 hours! (For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Patientline is a system that provides TV, Telephone and Internet services at the bedside in hospitals - the internet service is rubbish, based on Windows CE from what I could see when I crashed the system , and the service is generally a rip off). I really does sadden me that the nurses get such pathetic pay for the job they do.

I agree with everything you said. I have only needed to be treated once in hospital, but the food was great, the staff was excellent and I couldn't fault the after care.

And I remembered how well I had been treated when I watched that woman being dumped on the sidewalk in a hospital smock, because she couldn't pay her bill.

Damn that s**t better not happen here.

++ .

NHS sorted my aneurism out.  The only down-side was having to spend a week in a hospital ward full of old people *shudder*   Total cost to me, about £50 for the PatientLine rip-off (I was unable to sleep due to the pain and the nausea from the morphine drip), and £5 for the chocolates I bought the nurses when I left.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the operation, and I must remember to organize another ultrasound to check the prosthetic artery is holding up well ... all I have to do is visit my GP and wait for the appointment ... no cost.

Herbie

RobbieCrusoe wrote:

What did this stay and operation cost me personally?... £2.90 for the patientline crap at the bedside so I could watch TV whilst lying still for 5 hours!

See, if you'd have thought about it beforehand, you could have got health insurance which would have paid the extortionate cost of the TV.

Massif wrote:

As long as you don't need a sticking plaster, then Cuba's an excellent place to fall ill. They have all the training, but none of the materials.

Likewise, as long as you only want to read, Cuba's fantastic... If you want to write something, then be prepared to wait in a long line for a pen. (I kid you not. And we could only find one shop selling pens too, whereas literally dozens sold books.)

Cuba's only fantastic if you're not Cuban.

Wikipedia wrote:

 For many years, Cuba has operated a special division of hospitals that treated foreigners and diplomats while excluding Cubans. Every year, thousands of European, Latin American, Canadian and American consumers with hard cash visit to access medical care services at up to 80 percent less than U.S. costs. There are some who criticize Cuba's medical tourism industry because ordinary Cubans do not have access to the kind of quality healthcare that medical tourists receive.

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

Food is rationed by the government, you can only purchase food with these stamps, and the stamps are for predetermined items, like a bushel of onions, or a bag of potatoes.

Also, I don't think Cubans are even allowed to eat in fine restaurants; they are exclusively for vacationing foreigners.

phreaks wrote:



Massif wrote: As long as you don't need a sticking plaster, then Cuba's an excellent place to fall ill. They have all the training, but none of the materials. Likewise, as long as you only want to read, Cuba's fantastic... If you want to write something, then be prepared to wait in a long line for a pen. (I kid you not. And we could only find one shop selling pens too, whereas literally dozens sold books.)

Cuba's only fantastic if you're not Cuban.

My experience says you're probably right, but it also says that Cubans love their country. (Like, aside from all the ones who met me saying that, all the ones who my friend who goes every single year knows all say that too...) So I'm assuming that although tourists get the best of the country, the Cubans themselves don't do too badly. (Considering they've been subject to a trade imbargo for the last 40 years or so.)

phreaks wrote:



Wikipedia wrote:  For many years, Cuba has operated a special division of hospitals that treated foreigners and diplomats while excluding Cubans. Every year, thousands of European, Latin American, Canadian and American consumers with hard cash visit to access medical care services at up to 80 percent less than U.S. costs. There are some who criticize Cuba's medical tourism industry because ordinary Cubans do not have access to the kind of quality healthcare that medical tourists receive.

Food is rationed by the government, you can only purchase food with these stamps, and the stamps are for predetermined items, like a bushel of onions, or a bag of potatoes.

Also, I don't think Cubans are even allowed to eat in fine restaurants; they are exclusively for vacationing foreigners.

The truth is, although I saw nothing like food stamps (and I at least drank in native bars), native cubans are kept out of the "tourist" restaurants by a much simpler (and highly confusing) system of having two currencies, a tourist one and a local one. Native cubans don't have many opportunities to earn tourist money, so they can't eat in tourist restaurants. (and they wouldn't want to, because tourist restaurants sell the same stuff for 20x as much as the local ones.)

That said, the finest restaurant in the country is a privately run business. (There are bizarre regulations on private businesses, but basically as long as you're running it out of your front room you're allowed to do what you like.)

Then again, "Cuban Cuisine" is fried pork with rice and beans, or Pizza. It's not a country you go to for the food.

Cuba is hardly an example of a well run government and as long as the US has them under sanctions, they aren't going to be improving, much.

But that doesn't mean that the ideal of offering a base level of healthcare to every citizen of a country is a bad thing.

It won't turn the US into Soviet Russia no matter how often the libertardians claim otherwise.  It will, however move the cronically unemployed out of the emergency room and into smaller and cheaper clinics.  And, hopefully, it will do so before the issue becomes an emergency.

I have to laugh every time I hear "Ooooooh, it's so expensive.  Why should my taxes pay for those lazy <poor/immigrants/whatever>". 

Well, because you are already paying for it, but you are doing so at highly inflated rates.  You aren't paying for preventive care, you are paying for the ampuation or the heart attack. 

And your health insurance is going up because of this.

And, exactly how much of a jerk do you need to be to argue from the point of view of "Screw them, if they can't afford it, too bad"?