The Thinking ‘Kat: Universal Reality
In another reality, I would be staring down the barrel of huge medical debt right now. Indeed, if I lived in the USA, this would be my reality.
Recently, my daughter has faced a barrage of blood tests, MRIs and ultrasound scans, all which culminated in thyroid surgery, and an overnight stay in hospital. The cost of all of that to my wife and I? Nothing. We have not paid one single penny toward the medical procedures. This is because here in the UK, we have the National Health Service. The NHS provides free at point-of-use care to millions of people, across a variety of illnesses and injuries, and this in turn provides peace of mind. I do ‘pay’ for the NHS in the same way that I pay for education, policing and the military; it’s done via my taxes, and having had roughly £3,000 deducted from my pay in the form of taxation last year, and with 40% of that going to the NHS, I contributed £1,200 to the NHS.
So, for the precise and the pedantic among us, I paid £1,200 for my daughter’s medical procedures.
In the USA, an ultrasound costs anywhere from $100 to $800, depending on the body part, and the technology being used (with insurance). The average cost of an MRI scan is $1,325. Blood tests vary wildly, starting at $29 but rising to nearly $400, depending on the requirements of the test. With insurance, thyroid surgery ranges from $1,500 to $5,000. An overnight stay in hospital can set you back $100, but could be as much as $500, again if you happen to have insurance.
So, let’s add that together. The low-end cost for my daughter’s exams and treatment in the USA would come to $3,054, or £2,291. The high-end? $8,025, or £6,020.
Now, keep in mind that these costs assume one blood test, one MRI and one ultrasound, and my daughter had more than one of each of these procedures. So, if I were living in the USA, I’d be paying out nearly double for one set of procedures, than I would pay for an unlimited number of these procedures here in the UK.
As surreal as it may seem, there are plenty of conservatives in the USA who would prefer to fight tooth-and-nail to preserve their current system, and worryingly, there are some in the UK who would gleefully replace the NHS for a US-style insurance system. There are quite a few commentators on the right-side of the political aisle who are against the NHS, but the problem doesn’t rest with how it’s funded. When the system works, it works extremely well (my daughter was fast-tracked through the process). It spares people from falling into crippling medical debt.
Quite why anyone would be opposed to this is baffling, but a lot of the arguments – at least from the US side of the Atlantic – are rooted in fear of government, and questions around the role of government. A lot of this misses the point. The NHS is not government. It is a healthcare service. Having it funded by government is not the same as having it run by politicians. Utilising taxes to provide a service that helps people is surely one of the fundamentals of government? The alternative – which is unique to the USA, especially among developed nations – is letting people be fleeced for profit, and forcing terrible choices to be made.
To conservatives, the alternative is somehow better because ‘freedom’. The freedom to do what, exactly?
There’s no way that we want a US-style system here in the UK. It would have left me financially crippled. Let’s keep to a system that works, and is proven to work the world over.
‘Kat Comments