BestHealthCareRates.com Reveals Alarming Differences in Healthcare Systems In Britain and U.S.
Posted on Fri, Aug 21, 2009
There are some alarming statistics regarding the state of socialized health care in Britain, as compared to the United States' private medical insurance system in its present state. Despite the fact that the health care system in this country is flawed and there is an excessive amount of waste while many Americans are slipping through the cracks, the current system still outperforms Britain in terms of healthcare and mortality rates in many different areas.
Even though high-profile Britons like Stephen Hawking champion the healthcare system of his country, the statistics speak for themselves. American women with breast cancer outlive their British counterparts almost 2 to 1. Angioplasties are done less than 25% as often as they are done in the U.S. This is a very useful preventative procedure to delay heart problems. Death due to heart attacks is 20% higher there than in this country. Prostate cancer is fatal for 57% of British sufferers, while only 19% of American men with it die as a result.
Critics of the socialized system find its policies concerning healthcare alarming. Those suffering from macular degeneration used to have to wait until they had lost sight in one eye before becoming eligible for a pricey new drug to save eyesight in such cases. Another policy reduced the number of steroid injections that could be given for back pain from 60,000 a year to 3,000.
The wait time for healthcare is a big factor for many people's fear of the government run healthcare insurance system. Wait times in Britain for most procedures are double what they are in the U.S. For cancer treatments, patients may wait up to one year and often patients who might have been saved turn into incurable cases before they start treatment. The number of diagnostic machines like MRIs and CT scanners is much lower per capita than in America. That also affects the speed at which diagnostic testing is done.
You want to be able to say ‘No thanks, I've got private medical insurance' when they come by with the health care reform package. By having your own medical insurance plan, you retain control of your own healthcare and isn't that the way it should be?