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Breaking Bad would still be a show! Walter White was a chemistry teacher, which implies he had health insurance that would cover chemotherapy. He also has a s

Breaking Bad would still be a show! Walter White was a chemistry teacher, which implies he had health insurance that would cover chemotherapy. He also has a son with cerebral palsy, who almost certainly has needed medical treatment before. The thing is, he only wanted to go to the "best" doctors, which his insurance didn't cover. He also refused to let his friends pay his bills. You could still make this kind of choice with socialized medicine -- "I don't want the in-network doctors, I only want the best!"

SilasX 9y ago
Right. For example, the UK has free education, but there's a British show [1] whose plot involves a man who does shady, illegal things so he can pay for a prestigious boarding school for his son. [1] forget the name -- the one with the grandma constable
chimeracoder 9y ago
> The thing is, he only wanted to go to the "best" doctors, which his insurance didn't cover. He also refused to let his friends pay his bills. Yup, cancer treatment in the UK in particular is incredibly appalling. Compared to the US, patients have very little control over their treatment options, and it's very easy to get the NHS to refuse to cover your treatment because you haven't followed the one of the treatment plans they determine for your case. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons why cancer survival rates in the UK are so much lower than in the US, even when you include people who can't afford ideal treatment in the US.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > Yup, cancer treatment in the UK in particular is incredibly appalling. Compared to the US, patients have very little control over their treatment options, and it's very easy to get the NHS to refuse to cover your treatment because you haven't followed the one of the treatment plans they determine for your case. Please can you provide any kind of sources for this?
- dfraser992 9y ago
  Well, I live in the UK (am American), had stage IIIb melanoma last year, and will never be able to say enough how happy I was with my treatment. Granted, I was lucky - it hadn't metastasized and Norfolk has the best in terms of skin cancer related everything. It can be a bit postcode lottery, I know, and if you have any sort of complicated or extensive cancer, I can see there might be some issues with regard to treatment options - for the individual, a no holds barred any cure at all grasping at straws attitude is expected, but is it good policy to indulge such people on the public dime? No, it isn't. The recent case over the terminally ill baby at Great Ormond was appalling - those parents, while understandably upset, were little more than pawns for the right-to-lifers from the US. That was a total fiasco that could have been avoided. An attitude of every-last-measure-possible-to-save-a-life is disrespectful to life. So your blanket condemnation is unfair. There are a lot of factors involved in trying to chart the --wisest-- course about what to do with the sick and infirm and the US is completely screwed up. I'm also diabetic and have saved at least $60k over the years due to that being subsidized. In return, the UK gets my economic output - I read recently insulin in the US has gone from about $20 a bottle (when I left) to over $200 (for brand name stuff). I am smart enough to understand how to manage things with 'generic' insulin, unlike those who think they must buy exactly what the doctor prescribes, but $200 for a bottle is appalling and there have been a few stories about people dying due to rationing their insulin and etc. And I've had a few minor operations as well that have saved me a good $50k or so - before I moved, I was an contractor and I couldn't get health insurance by myself thanks to the diabetes unless I worked for a large enough company / could be absorbed into a pool without the insurance company considering me a problem. Living in CA let me get onto a state run plan for people like me that was a bit pricey (but my only option) - if I'd lived almost anywhere else, I would not have had insurance. I moved before ObamaCare, but I wasn't that impressed with what I read - Obama .. well, don't get me started. Nor on HMOs. And now Trump et al have ripped everything to shreds. It is articles like this that make me so glad I moved. The NHS has its problems, but it sure as heck isn't the US and whatever "extra" taxes I might pay for socialized medicine is worth it.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > An attitude of every-last-measure-possible-to-save-a-life is disrespectful to life. This is a complete straw-man when talking about long-term cancer survival rates and treatment success outcomes. > So your blanket condemnation is unfair. There's no blanket condemnation. The survival rates for cancer in the UK are dramatically lower than they are in the US. When you break it down by types of cancer (since prevalence is not uniform), the comparison becomes even more apparent, especially for forms of cancer that are considered generally treatable.

SilasX 9y ago

Right. For example, the UK has free education, but there's a British show [1] whose plot involves a man who does shady, illegal things so he can pay for a prestigious boarding school for his son. [1] forget the name -- the one with the grandma constable

chimeracoder 9y ago

> The thing is, he only wanted to go to the "best" doctors, which his insurance didn't cover. He also refused to let his friends pay his bills. Yup, cancer treatment in the UK in particular is incredibly appalling. Compared to the US, patients have very little control over their treatment options, and it's very easy to get the NHS to refuse to cover your treatment because you haven't followed the one of the treatment plans they determine for your case. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons why cancer survival rates in the UK are so much lower than in the US, even when you include people who can't afford ideal treatment in the US.

DanBC 9y ago
> Yup, cancer treatment in the UK in particular is incredibly appalling. Compared to the US, patients have very little control over their treatment options, and it's very easy to get the NHS to refuse to cover your treatment because you haven't followed the one of the treatment plans they determine for your case. Please can you provide any kind of sources for this?
dfraser992 9y ago
Well, I live in the UK (am American), had stage IIIb melanoma last year, and will never be able to say enough how happy I was with my treatment. Granted, I was lucky - it hadn't metastasized and Norfolk has the best in terms of skin cancer related everything. It can be a bit postcode lottery, I know, and if you have any sort of complicated or extensive cancer, I can see there might be some issues with regard to treatment options - for the individual, a no holds barred any cure at all grasping at straws attitude is expected, but is it good policy to indulge such people on the public dime? No, it isn't. The recent case over the terminally ill baby at Great Ormond was appalling - those parents, while understandably upset, were little more than pawns for the right-to-lifers from the US. That was a total fiasco that could have been avoided. An attitude of every-last-measure-possible-to-save-a-life is disrespectful to life. So your blanket condemnation is unfair. There are a lot of factors involved in trying to chart the --wisest-- course about what to do with the sick and infirm and the US is completely screwed up. I'm also diabetic and have saved at least $60k over the years due to that being subsidized. In return, the UK gets my economic output - I read recently insulin in the US has gone from about $20 a bottle (when I left) to over $200 (for brand name stuff). I am smart enough to understand how to manage things with 'generic' insulin, unlike those who think they must buy exactly what the doctor prescribes, but $200 for a bottle is appalling and there have been a few stories about people dying due to rationing their insulin and etc. And I've had a few minor operations as well that have saved me a good $50k or so - before I moved, I was an contractor and I couldn't get health insurance by myself thanks to the diabetes unless I worked for a large enough company / could be absorbed into a pool without the insurance company considering me a problem. Living in CA let me get onto a state run plan for people like me that was a bit pricey (but my only option) - if I'd lived almost anywhere else, I would not have had insurance. I moved before ObamaCare, but I wasn't that impressed with what I read - Obama .. well, don't get me started. Nor on HMOs. And now Trump et al have ripped everything to shreds. It is articles like this that make me so glad I moved. The NHS has its problems, but it sure as heck isn't the US and whatever "extra" taxes I might pay for socialized medicine is worth it.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > An attitude of every-last-measure-possible-to-save-a-life is disrespectful to life. This is a complete straw-man when talking about long-term cancer survival rates and treatment success outcomes. > So your blanket condemnation is unfair. There's no blanket condemnation. The survival rates for cancer in the UK are dramatically lower than they are in the US. When you break it down by types of cancer (since prevalence is not uniform), the comparison becomes even more apparent, especially for forms of cancer that are considered generally treatable.