Tag Archives: Health

Just a Wee Blether…

About Health Care or Wealth Care?

Celebrity gossip is not something that greatly interests me – but one story that made massive headlines over here was the fate of Lamar Odom, a former basketball player and the husband of Khloe Kardashian.

Odom was found in a coma in a brothel called the Love Ranch about 80 miles from Las Vegas. He had taken an overdose of drugs and was rushed to hospital and transferred to an exclusive medical centre in Los Angeles. A recent report suggested his medical bill was a jaw-dropping $17million and rising. It was reportedly being paid by the Kardashian family.

Of course he is a very wealthy celebrity and being charged accordingly. But the cost of health care in America is a major day-to-day problem for all “ordinary” people.

Last year the son of a friend of a friend of a friend who lives in northern Arizona jumped into a shallow lake and suffered a bad spinal injury. His family has been forced to start a Just Giving online page to raise money for the cost of his medical care.

Yet another friend of a friend was bitten by a rattlesnake in New Mexico. He was told the cost of his treatment would be $30,000 and that his insurance company was not guaranteeing to cover it. So he went to Mexico and bought an affordable antidote across the counter – a fairly common tactic for people who live near the border.

There is no universal health care system in the United States. In fact, to call the system one of “health care” is stretching it. I recently met a chap from Dundee who said it was “not health care but wealth care” – and he is right.

Imagine if, in the UK, your parents or other relatives retired, then had to sell their house to pay for their health care. It would never happen; the National Health Service is there to look after them. In 2012, a total of 43% of senior citizens in the US were forced to sell or mortgage their primary residence to pay for health needs.

Someone I know recently had to make an appointment with Urgent Care, a walk-in medical provider. She is uninsured so the appointment cost $125. She was passing discoloured urine and feeling off-colour and so blood and urine tests were taken.

A week later she asked if they had the results of the urine tests. The people at the centre told her that, as she a “cash pay customer” rather than a client with insurance, there was no box on the form to alert the administrator to send the sample for further analysis. So the urine sample has never been sent to this day.

Americans pay massive amounts of money to a confusing myriad of so-called health schemes for medical insurance. Yet incidents such as those I have described happen all the time and are symptomatic of a colossal failure on the part of a wealthy nation. It produces scores of great entrepreneurs and leads the way in research and technology but cannot look after its own people.

A report in 2009 showed that between 45,000 and 48,000 people die in the US every year as a direct result of lack of health insurance. The Affordable Care Act – dubbed Obamacare – has since been introduced by President Obama to try to increase access to health care for people who cannot afford it.

To most people that sounds like an excellent scheme yet Obama’s opponents have resisted it tooth and nail – something that speaks volumes about the pitiful state of American politics.

A health professional recently told me that the US health service is “broken” – which assumes it was ever working in the first place. As an incomer it strikes me as a shameful situation, a complete and utter scandal, the biggest disgrace in American society. The people of America are penalised for being ill.

If a country is judged on how it looks after its people, then America, one of the largest and richest nations on earth, is an embarrassing and spectacular failure. Everything is profit-driven, the pursuit of money is the bottom line, greed is a national pastime.

What is even more amazing is that most people never question the situation. They seem perfectly happy to throw thousands of their hard-earned dollars into the coffers of super-rich insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

When I tell them about the NHS, most think it is a wonderful idea and wish it could happen here. Although one person said he hated the sound of it as it was too “socialistic”.

So for those of you back in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK – next time you feel like criticizing the NHS, just be very grateful it exists.