Sunday Forum: Socialized medicine saved my life

[Bravo Zulu]

The British National Health System gets a bad rap in America but most Britons love it, reports OWEN VIGEON
Sunday, November 01, 2009
COVENTRY, England -- As the American health-care debate rages on, I'd like to recount a personal experience with the utterly socialized British National Health Service, which often gets bad-mouthed by U.S. politicians.

In March 2008 I was 79 years old. One night I woke with excruciating pain in my left ankle. The usual domestic pain killers had no effect. My wife and I got up and dressed and she drove me to our hospital in Coventry. It is one of the newest in the country and its emergency service is at the sharp end of modern surgery.

I remember being helped into the hospital and then knew nothing until I woke up in the critical-care ward. Later I found that I had suffered infective arthritis in my ankle.

For two weeks I was at death's door as my whole system was poisoned by the infection. My pastor visited me and was so concerned that the next thing I registered was a "whiff of purple" as my bishop came to bless me. But most of the time I was hallucinating and out of touch with reality.

I was seen by orthopedic, gastric and lung specialists, but I probably owe my life most to the fact that the hospital had its own microbiology specialist who was able to prescribe the right treatment.

Twice I was taken down for surgery on my ankle so that the infection could be washed out. For those two weeks I was the recipient of one-to-one specialist nursing. When the worst was passed, I was taken to a surgical ward for another four weeks -- continually under an antibiotic drip feed -- until I was pronounced fit enough to go home.

I had to continue on antibiotics for a further month until the doctors were convinced that the infection was not going to flare up again.

The care was beyond reproach, and an English hospital these days is rather like the United Nations. Our ward charge nurse was a very cheerful male nurse from Zimbabwe -- in Britain as a refugee from the dreadful regime that rules his homeland. One of the doctors, who was most charming as he tried to get me to swallow a cable so that my stomach could be examined, was from Malaysia. The surgeon I saw most is Slovenian. They came to receive training from top-class specialists.

At one point, my wife was told, "If this antibiotic doesn't work there is nothing more we can do." It was that serious.


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Fifteen months later I am as fully recovered as an 81-year-old man can be, though my ankle will always be delicate because the infection ate away at the gristle in the joint. But I enjoy a full life. An Anglican minister, I am back in the pulpit and taking the duties of other ministers who are sick or on holiday.

All this excellent treatment was done without any charge or any bureaucratic inquiry into my circumstances -- never mind any query about my old age. As I was getting more like myself I wondered what a fortune all this specialist care was costing the service and voiced my concern to my nurse.

"Don't worry," she said, "after all it's your right -- you have been paying for it all your life."

That is the spirit of our National Health Service. We don't think of it as "the government health service" but rather we call it "our health service." And we are proud of it.

Any British politician who does not share this point of view will invariably be someone with sufficient wealth not to need the National Health Service. And of course, if you can afford the high fees of private medical care, you can get as much as you want, just as in the United States. The vast majority of Britons are happy to use the national scheme, though.

I am not of course saying that the NHS is faultless, but my own "niggles" tend to be about little things like the time it sometimes takes to get a specialist to report back to the family doctor.

There was an amusing coda to my hospital experience. As I was returning to the land of the living, I realized that my top dentures were missing. In the emergency unit they had removed my artificial teeth and somehow in the rush of care one set had got lost.

No problem. I wrote to the hospital administration and they told me to get my dentist to make me a new set and send them the bill.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09305/1009609-109.stm?cmpid=newspanel#ixzz0Va3sIqNc

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I have yet to hear about an honest complaint by a citizen of any of the

countries that have "Socialized medicine".
In fact, I have heard nothing but strong defenses...and stories of American ex-pats
who are living in those countries....Canada, UK, France, etc..who would not come back to
the US particularly due to the health care situation here.

[Blue State Blues]

5. I know one person in Canada who had to wait for a knee replacement

and she wasn't thrilled about that. However, she appreciates that she will never go bankrupt from medical bills or be denied care when she urgently needs it. She would not trade her system for ours even if it meant no waiting.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. they don't ask you for your insurance card!

you just go to the doctor and give your name to the receptionist and you sit down in the waiting room. Bliss.

[pansypoo53219]

3. amerikans prefer to be screwed

by the health insurance industrial complex.

[LeftishBrit]

4. k&r