Writer's Block: Health Care
This as in so much else is a question of degree and while it needs to be managed by rules those rules should be at least a little flexible otherwise things do slip through the cracks.
About 10 years ago I got sick. I thought I had food poinsoning and was trying to struggle home to get to bed. Luckily a passing FireBrigade spotted me gave me oxygen and put me in an ambulance. Dangerously high fever, blood poisoning with a couple of things I can´t spell. About a month later still off work I got a bill for the ambulance, not working there was not much spare cash to go round so it wasn´t easy to pay. Thankfully it was only the ambulance ride, and perscriptions I had to pay for.
So here is the trick how much should be free? and too whom? on what conditions? Britains universal health care has been abused for a gerneration by people coming into the country already sick/injured whatever. They all get treated for free.
Basic and Emergency care should be free, always. But like in Hungary a minimal admin fee should be charged at the doctor´s office and hospital to stop people going in for a check up because of hay fever or a headache.
Cosmetic surgery for accident victems, birth defects and abnormalities (hair lip etc). Should be free, Having a big nose reduced or a mole removed because it damages your self confidence shouldn´t even be subsidised, (it won´t make you like yourself any more and really this is the problem here).
Alternative therapies (all of them) should be subsidised but elective and the patient should in most cases bare part of the cost.
Lifestyle advisors to help you improve your background level of health quit smoking lose weight (within reason) improve your fittness should be subsidesed, to a certain extent, perhaps one visit a year or something like that.
There should be a parralle and linked system of private health along side the public one that the rich, and companies can use to get fast care at their own expense. But all workers in the profession should be quailfied by and regulated under the same legislation and overseeing bodies. further more workers in the private sector especially should be fiscally encoraged to do at least one day a week in the public system, exchange of knowledge and best practices etc.
The big phamacutical firms should have less influence than they do in most healthcare systems. How to do this without more regulation because really healthcare needs less in most places I have no idea.
Now on to the controversal part, those that make no contribution to the system and never have should be treated in an emergency without question but should then have to pay the system back for thier care.
About 10 years ago I got sick. I thought I had food poinsoning and was trying to struggle home to get to bed. Luckily a passing FireBrigade spotted me gave me oxygen and put me in an ambulance. Dangerously high fever, blood poisoning with a couple of things I can´t spell. About a month later still off work I got a bill for the ambulance, not working there was not much spare cash to go round so it wasn´t easy to pay. Thankfully it was only the ambulance ride, and perscriptions I had to pay for.
So here is the trick how much should be free? and too whom? on what conditions? Britains universal health care has been abused for a gerneration by people coming into the country already sick/injured whatever. They all get treated for free.
Basic and Emergency care should be free, always. But like in Hungary a minimal admin fee should be charged at the doctor´s office and hospital to stop people going in for a check up because of hay fever or a headache.
Cosmetic surgery for accident victems, birth defects and abnormalities (hair lip etc). Should be free, Having a big nose reduced or a mole removed because it damages your self confidence shouldn´t even be subsidised, (it won´t make you like yourself any more and really this is the problem here).
Alternative therapies (all of them) should be subsidised but elective and the patient should in most cases bare part of the cost.
Lifestyle advisors to help you improve your background level of health quit smoking lose weight (within reason) improve your fittness should be subsidesed, to a certain extent, perhaps one visit a year or something like that.
There should be a parralle and linked system of private health along side the public one that the rich, and companies can use to get fast care at their own expense. But all workers in the profession should be quailfied by and regulated under the same legislation and overseeing bodies. further more workers in the private sector especially should be fiscally encoraged to do at least one day a week in the public system, exchange of knowledge and best practices etc.
The big phamacutical firms should have less influence than they do in most healthcare systems. How to do this without more regulation because really healthcare needs less in most places I have no idea.
Now on to the controversal part, those that make no contribution to the system and never have should be treated in an emergency without question but should then have to pay the system back for thier care.