7 ms·

I grew up and lived most of my life in America, then emigrated to a country with universal healthcare (the UK). When I developed a life-threatening condition wh

• hueving 10y ago
  What life threatening condition did you have that isn't covered by insurance?
  • Faaak 10y ago
    Organ transplant, edit: most likely
  • nkoren 10y ago
    Long-term back pain that counted as a pre-existing condition for every insurance package I had, on the rare occasions when I could afford to be insured. That eventually degenerated into a couple of prolapsed disc that cut off the nerves to may legs, resulting in constant pain (the kind that leaves you screaming and writhing without a constant morphine drip) and making it impossible to walk, sit up, or go to the bathroom unaided. While not technically a life-threatening condition, my quality of life was low enough that I certainly would have committed suicide had it persisted indefinitely. In the US, as I say, this would not have been covered by my insurance, and would have cost around $50,000 to fix. Completely infeasible for me to find that amount of money. The NHS did an excellent job of fixing it for free.
  • nkoren 10y ago
    Long-term back pain that counted as a pre-existing condition for every insurance package I had, on the rare occasions when I could afford to be insured. That eventually degenerated into a couple of prolapsed disc that cut off the nerves to may legs, resulting in constant pain (the kind that leaves you screaming and writhing without a constant morphine drip) and making it impossible to walk, sit up, or go to the bathroom unaided. While not technically a life-threatening condition, my quality of life was low enough that I certainly would have committed suicide had it persisted indefinitely. In the US, as I say, this would not have been covered by my insurance, and would have cost around $50,000 to fix. Completely infeasible for me to find that amount of money. The NHS did an excellent job of fixing it for free.
• usaphp 10y ago
  > "life-threatening condition which my US insurance would never have covered" I wonder how is that possible? Insurance plans these days have to cover you even if you have a pre-existing condition, even the cheapest plans cover everything after a deductible, unless I am missing something
  • r00fus 10y ago
    Thank Obamacare for that, and that only kicked in on 2011. Prior to that, insurance recission was a real and pervasive issue for those with preexisting conditions.
    • noir_lord 10y ago
      You have to wonder how long 'Obamacare' is going to last now with a Republican president, congress and senate...
      • privong 10y ago
        > You have to wonder how long 'Obamacare' is going to last now with a Republican president, congress and senate... I don't think the Republicans have enough people in the Senate to block filibusters. So I assume the Democrats will use the filibuster to block repeals of the healthcare law.
        • dangoor 10y ago
          NYTimes has an article describing how they can effectively dismantle large portions of Obamacare: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/the-future-of-obamacare-looks-bleak.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/the-future-of-obama...
        • r00fus 10y ago
          Why in the world would the GOP ever leave the filibuster in place? Mitch will remove it at the beginning of the 115th Congress. Boom. Now Obamacare can be repealed with simple majority. I bet you dollars to donuts that insurance prices, however, will not go back down to pre-Obamacare prices. Because profits.
• rorykoehler 10y ago
  The nhs is great. A model for the rest of the world to follow yet the tories are fighting tooth and nail to dismantle it.
  • ollie87 10y ago
    Yep, they spend £600m a year on management consultants to tell them things they already know. Enough to run 8-9 large hospitals. That's public money going to the private sector for no real benefit.
    • croon 10y ago
      I've gotten a pavlovian response to "good things", where I start imagining it already breaking down. Like Obamas presidency. For every good he's done or tried to do, all the shit in the world that affects the US (and even things that are not real apparently) gets pinned on him, regardless of cause. And sure, Obamacare probably has a lot of faults, but is that because of its concept, because of congressional gridlock, or compromises? I won't argue either way, but it's always sad when something gets dismantled or at least scolded for reasons outside of its grasp. I don't know enough about NHS to say, but spending £600M/year on management consultants doesn't sound like a healthcare problem. I'm not religious, but it's the same with Islam being lumped together with extremists, Christianity being lumped in with crusades and westboro baptists and other lunatics, and both republicans and liberals being categorized by a few vocal idiots. Sometimes you have to try to look objectively at something and the faults alongside it, and try to determine if they are one and the same. Sometimes it's worth fighting to improve something instead of just burning it to the ground, because there's a good chance the new foundation being built is worse than what you destroyed.
  • noir_lord 10y ago
    They are and we aren't fighting back tooth and nail to stop them. We just let them do it because we (collective we) have grown so used to having it we can't remember what it was like before, people dying from treatable conditions because they couldn't afford it, average life expectancy been a whole decade lower (or more) etc. We (again collective) won't realise what we had until it's gone.