Young woman in UK almost died because of national healthcare system

Discussion in 'Health Care' started by kazenatsu, Dec 18, 2021.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is what can happen in a socialized health care system.

    A woman who had a severe cough says she was initially denied a medical appointment, due to her young age.
    "They kept telling me I wasn't eligible for an urgent appointment because it was just a cough," Chloe Girardier, who is 23-year-old, said.
    Eventually, Girardier said, she was given antibiotics, inhalers, and acid reflux tablets, but her symptoms didn't change.
    It took her 5 months and 7 doctor visits later before she finally became fed up, and realizing something was wrong, insisted to the doctor that she at least have a chest X-ray.
    The X-ray scan showed she had cancer, there was a 4.25-inch mass in her chest.

    "I can't believe it wasn't looked into further and if I hadn't pushed for the chest X-ray, I may still not have a diagnosis," she said.
    Other young women have spoken up about advocating for themselves in the healthcare system.

    "A 23-year-old says doctors dismissed her worrisome cough for 5 months. It turned out to be cancer" - Insider, December 15, 2021

    It seems doctors just weren't really motivated to give her a thorough examination or really look hard for what might be wrong with her. If she hadn't taken the reigns and demanded that X-ray, the cancer might have continued to spread and reached a fatal stage where it was too late. Tests like X-rays cost money, and doctors in the national healthcare systems can be reluctant to want to have to spend the money, since the system is trying to get them to reduce costs and ration care.
     
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  2. Bob Newhart

    Bob Newhart Well-Known Member

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    As the leftists say, she got all the medically necessary treatment, right. And she could have gone to the black market or out of country to get health care . . .
     
  3. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    An intractible cough always demands an x-ray. Before that happens though, in the absence of infection there should be spirometry - which would show an obstruction given such a large mass - and this in turn would oblige x-rays. These are standard practice. Can't explain what happened in the UK. Sounds more like human error - which of course is a big problem, just not the SAME problem as that cited.
     
  4. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    That's your evidence...one case!

    When time and again the data clearly shows that virtually every national health care system in the western world outperforms the US health care system by a significant margin on every key metric, metric relating to efficiency and cost. Like it or not this is the cold, hard, indisputable truth.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
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  5. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    And how often is this same condition missed in America? Have you been subjected to an X-ray for every cough and cold?
     
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  6. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Not always with mediastinal masses unless they are impacting the bronchi

    Very very rare
     
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  7. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Or she could have gone private

    Same as here the UK does have a two tier system and those who do not want or like the NHS can go private
     
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  8. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    Please list all these "key metrics" specifically so we can see if your claim holds any truth to it.
     
  9. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    This will do for a start, but there are other sources of data that more or less state the same thing based on a comparative analysis of competing health care systems.

    https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pu...2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly

    Exhibit two from the above link sums up the situation graphically quite well I think.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
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  10. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    Bold assumption this would have been better in the US. Chances are she wouldn't have had healthcare in the first place. I mean OP, what was the point in posting this story?
     
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  11. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Every national health system that is White English-speaking or Western European, coincidentally.

    Oh we've already endlessly discussed this in countless threads.

    (But I'm not going to engage in that here, because that is taking this thread off topic)
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
  12. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    So what? Who do you expect me to compare the US with?

    I specifically stated Western World in my post because they are the countries that best match the US in terms of wealth and investment health care. (Language has nothing to do with it BTW.) You can dig up the the stats for Singapore, Japan & Korea etc if you want but they also have universal health care systems and won't significantly change the results.

    Given the above who would you suggest I get comparisons from? Bangladesh? Yemen? Niger? I mean if someone really wants to make the US system to look 'good' I suppose they could do that. Me? No. (I'll stick with comparing apples with apples.)

    It is entirely on topic. Your the one pointing to one (singular) substandard medical outcome in a national health care system as 'evidence' that such systems are by default prone to producing poor outcomes. Yet the evidence clearly shows that claim is incorrect.

    Alternately I could, I suppose using your argument simply look up two adverse outcomes in the US health care system and then claim they 'prove' the US system is worse. But that would be silly since comprehensive comparative analysis is the only way to support such claims. And comparative analysis shows..... see above.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
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  13. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The US is obviously an outlier, in many ways, within the group of countries that are usually categorized as being in the "Western World".
    I do wonder if at some point in the future the US might drop out of that classification.

    I've said this before in different contexts: The US is like two different countries joined together. If you joined a rich country and a poor country together in the statistics, it would look a lot like the US.
    That's the likely reason the US is an outlier.

    It's questionable whether the US is really actually like other Western countries, despite what people usually claim.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
  14. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    Again all developed (I'll use developed as opposed to 'western' from now on) have varying degrees of income inequality. And thanks to advances in technology and the globalization of trade the margin of inequality has become worse in recent decades. The problem remains however that by default the US health care system is still inefficient and expensive. End result is that even the wealthy end up paying more for health care than they should (or would if they lived elsewhere).
     
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  15. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry, I'm not going to argue about this with you here. Start another thread, and leave the link to that thread here.

    This discussion is deviating too far from the original topic of this thread and going off on another complicated issue.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2021
  16. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So what this is really about is making some people die to save the lives of other people. Hmm... interesting. That couldn't be politically controversial, could it? (sarcasm)

    If you reduce the amount of resources allocated to something, there is a tendency for quality to go down. (For example, there's only so much money for expensive tests which they might know whether are needed) So cost going down isn't necessarily an indicator of efficiency of providing that service.

    We could also reduce the cost of health insurance by reducing the mandates on what the law says it has to cover, couldn't we? (That's another rhetorical question, if any of you couldn't tell)
     
  17. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    Well you also ignore that we were #2 in preventative care, safe care, patient engagement and preference from your very same source. So far your every country outperforming us on "every key metric" doesn't seem to be holding much water.
     
  18. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    I'm very behind on lungbags .. obviously :p
     
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  19. Caligula

    Caligula Well-Known Member

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    The OP's point is a) to throw dirt at other nations, b) illustrate how "bad" things, in this case health care, are in other countries, and c) prevent these bad things like socialized medicine and whatever forms of communism go along with it from reaching 'merican shores.
    He (the OP) usually throws in a well-thought out "It's probably even worse now" or something dumb like that. Check out some of those meaningless threads and it becomes clear.
     
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  20. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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  21. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    I note no validation for your claims
     
  22. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I notice you seem to be trying to counter my argument with a separate argument.

    Just pointing that out.
     
  23. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    It isn't the worst thing they did I remember one story a few years back where the NHS made sure that a man's son died.

    He was going to seek medical treatment for this boy in the US where the NHS either couldn't profit from helping him or was to incompetent. And they did this specifically so that nobody would have the impression that the US healthcare system is better.

    So making sure a person almost dies is not even the worst thing they've done. They made sure a man's 2-year-old son died so they could be right.

    As far as I am concerned that's an indictment of that kind of healthcare system.

    They not only pick who lives or who dies they get to determine whether or not you're allowed to seek better health Care elsewhere.
     
  24. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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  25. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Well that all really depends. Do you remember Alfie Evans? The two-year-old toddler that the NHS made sure was going to die. Sherry had a pretty nasty condition and it was probably going to kill him but the father of Alfie Evans was trying to get him to the US so that he could have their medical system evaluate and try and help. The father was forbidden a passport because of the US treated him and he recovered at least for a little while had an extension on his life then it would show that our medical system is better and it might erode confidence in the NHS.

    So they restrained that man and made sure his son died.

    So you don't always get to go somewhere else it depends on how much of a story it is and how much it's going to embarrass the NHS.

    There is a price you pay for this and it is Liberty.
     
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