The British NHS (National Health Service) is something every person in the UK is proud to be a part of. It is a travesty now in the US there is no equivalent. At this moment there rages a debate in America which has got pretty nasty, the debate is whether they should introduce a health service to their own country. This is on president Obama's agenda. In the mean time to discredit the notion of a national health system the Republican party are going full out in advertising and publicity. They emphasise the negative aspects of our own NHS service making it appear, decrepit, bureaucratic, inefficient and a service of assisted suicide rather than one of social morality. But the worse stark fact of America is there are 50 million people in the country who are unable to afford any type, even the most basic, health insurance. Now seeing as the UK has a population of approximately 60 million people, this is equivalent to an entire country where no one can see a doctor or go to a hospital because the system is based on monetary means. I heard one advert on their TV in which it emphasised how patients in the UK were unable to get help because of waiting lists however, in the US many people can't even be put on a waiting list.
I heard one story of a man who was British and living in New York, who had become ill with a stomach complaint. He knew it was serious as it had occurred before, but rather than go to an American hospital, he got on a plane travelled back to the UK and then walked straight into an A & E department of a hospital in London. He had health insurance in the US but because he had experienced their hospitals in action before he'd rather travel back thousands of miles to the UK. This is a counter arguement which does not have any airing on American TV and I'm sure if they did understand the full extent of what the NHS has done then the Republicans and any other misguided individual would know they had got it very wrong.
If America is such a religious country which believes in moral values, then why is it they are blind to the value of health care in the community? To understand it is immoral not to help people because they can not afford health care is a no brainer. Health care should not just be for those who have money, it should be extensive to help anyone who is ill, we are at our most vulnerable when sick and yet in America when you are sick then it will screw the most it can out of you financially. In the UK we have specialist hospitals, I am particularly thinking of Great Ormand Street Hospital. This is a NHS hospital which gives treatment to children and babies. It is geared up especially for this group. It is funded by the NHS and by charitable donations which in my mind it should not really have to ask for. In America if your baby is ill and you have inadequate or no health insurance then your baby is not going to be treated. Your baby may well die. The most vulnerable in society are the young, the old and the disabled, but it does not mean they are of no value. America's health care system is so financially based it has actually put a value on life, where on the the rich or those who by some serendipity have health insurance through their work or privately purchased are going to get help. In reality, the way I see it, America does not value life, it values money.
