Socialized medicine saves lives

[eridani]

http://news.yahoo.com/socialized-medicine-saving-life-131716411.html;_ylc=X3oDMTNudG1uMDZ1BF9TAzIxNDUzNjQ2NzIEYWN0A21haWxfY2IEY3QDYQRpbnRsA3VzBGxhbmcDZW4tVVMEcGtnA2YxMGU2NmJiLTZiMGQtMzBkZC04YTQ0LTkwNWQyYjE0ZTMxYwRzZWMDbWl0X3NoYXJlBHNsawNtYWlsBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3

I’m 27 and was diagnosed a year ago with Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease I will have for life. I got it despite my youth, resources, education and mostly healthy lifestyle. It’s a complex disorder, and potentially disabling. But I get to be sanguine about my future: I know that whatever comes, I have a safety net, a growing range of treatment options and the care of a first-class specialist. I have these things because I happen to be a UK national. Constitutional ambiguities aside, Americans should rejoice in a move towards a European healthcare model. Here's why.

Without access to the National Health Service or private insurance, I would be (and was, for a time) spending about $2000 a month on medications alone; along with consultants’ fees, ancillary imaging and testing, the disease could easily cost $40-50,000 a year. My best-case scenario would be a choice between health and a comfortable existence.

I moved to the UK to take advantage of my NHS eligibility, exhausted and angry after months grinding my fingers trying to wrest health out of an engine geared foremost to produce profit. Fragile and afraid, I had banged at the door of a fragmented, incoherent healthcare industrial complex, and – even with ready money – found only the frustrations of bureaucracy, and healthcare providers at every level whose interest in my case evaporated the moment the check cleared.

I came to the NHS steeled for similar challenges, only cheaper. Instead I found a different world. A de-monetized doctor-patient relationship has made a tremendous difference to my experience of care. With no incentive for hasty patient turnover, primary-care physicians learn about you and have time to fight your corner within a system they know intimately. A central data-sharing system obviated my stressful, hyper-vigilant legwork, accounting and record-keeping.

[limpyhobbler]

1. du rec nt.