Well, it's 60,000,000 Britons plus most of the rest of the free world, and clearly there are a good proportion of Americans who agree with us or those strongly against wouldn't feel so threatened. ;)
Daniel Hannan has probably destroyed his chances of ever being elected again for that comment, at least, he has certainly dashed his chances of ever making it to the House of Commons. It's a shame because he could have been great.
I don't think our system is perfect - far from it, but it is in a matter of implementation rather than the principle that is at fault. For example, most people pay for each prescription they are given, which is charging people who actually need the system, while there are a lot of people who visit a GP unnecessarily, so if you made the charge for seeing a GP, it would pay for all the prescriptions AND raise a lot more revenue besides.
We won't agree, of course, and when I unwittingly brought up this explosive topic, it was not specifically to the US system that I was referring - there are plenty of other countries where you are on your own when you get sick, mostly in Asia and Africa, of course, and I do believe that help should always be available.
I can't go into it any more, hostile debate is wearing and not productive, so I'm done. You both seem to think that I'm accusing you of being bad people or something, which I'm not, you've just read that in a very frustrating way, which is probably a failure to communicate effectively on my part for which I am sorry. Kate, over and out.
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Date: 2009-10-10 09:05 pm (UTC)Daniel Hannan has probably destroyed his chances of ever being elected again for that comment, at least, he has certainly dashed his chances of ever making it to the House of Commons. It's a shame because he could have been great.
I don't think our system is perfect - far from it, but it is in a matter of implementation rather than the principle that is at fault. For example, most people pay for each prescription they are given, which is charging people who actually need the system, while there are a lot of people who visit a GP unnecessarily, so if you made the charge for seeing a GP, it would pay for all the prescriptions AND raise a lot more revenue besides.
We won't agree, of course, and when I unwittingly brought up this explosive topic, it was not specifically to the US system that I was referring - there are plenty of other countries where you are on your own when you get sick, mostly in Asia and Africa, of course, and I do believe that help should always be available.
I can't go into it any more, hostile debate is wearing and not productive, so I'm done. You both seem to think that I'm accusing you of being bad people or something, which I'm not, you've just read that in a very frustrating way, which is probably a failure to communicate effectively on my part for which I am sorry. Kate, over and out.