One reason is the lies that are being promoted by some of the media/talking heads. Last year when the recession hit worldwide I received a letter from a friend in Great Britain who had money invested with AIG saying they would have to let their personal private health insurance go. How often do we hear that there is no such thing in Britain? Another British friend wrote to say that no British politician could be elected if he/she were for eliminating their National Health Plan. He felt it was better than what America has.
Aside from that my personal opinion is that we are putting the cart before the horse at the present time. You have to have the budget to pay for this & at present we are borrowing from the Chinese to keep our government afloat. Why should they have to subsidize health care in America? Let's concentrate on creating jobs, bringing back jobs sent overseas, whatever it takes to get people back to work. Then we'll begin to collect more taxes to lower the deficit & eventually raise taxes to cover a Universal Health Care Plan. IMO, Taxation is the only way to successfully pay for it & there's no point in creating a UHC if you can't afford it.
Private health insurance is a "benefit" of more or less any graduate job so it certainly does exist over here. Despite this I think most people never use it. While i do have it, the only operation i've ever had (having a wisdom tooth removed) was done on the NHS despite me having private health coverage.
There are many things debated and discussed about the National Health Service in the UK and yes it does suffer from lack of funding, cutbacks are nearly always made to it, especially in these difficult times, however, it does serve a great purpose and while it can always be imporved, it does phenomenally well considering the lack of funding and the mismanagement that occurs in the running of it.
My "father in law" had to have a hip replacement recently. He saw the doctor, was given a date within 3 months of his first consultation to go into hospital and have it done. He was in for about 4 days, in a ward with three other similar aged men and the after care has been pretty good. It's not as instant as with private health insurance, but when you consider the fact he didn't have to pay a penny for all of that including pain relief and drugs he was sent home with nor will be pay for all the physiotherapy he will require now. I don't even know what the cost of that operation would be if paid for privately.
The theory is that a lot of the money that goes to the NHS is paid for from the tax that is levied on cigarettes. Conisider that the cost of a single pack of 20 cigarettes (not a carton but a pack) is somewhere in the region of £7 here in the uk (nearly US$12) that does show you how much revenue is created here from taxing cigarettes.
It isn't seen as a big deal to not have private health insurance here in the UK because while waiting lists are still quite big, if you have a serious health problem, something that requires immediate attention, you skip to the front of the queue. While it can be frustrating for the patient who turns up to hospital, having fasted expecting to get their operation who then waits til the end of the day and gets sent home because more emergency operation havd to be done that day, i think people understand and realise that they are very lucky to have the system we have.
Ant
