# anada "Oi, # 204 Madonna" +### +### +#### +### # # # # # # # # # # by # # # ## # # # # # # 01 Schoolboy # .# ## # # .# # .# # .# nov *### * # * *### * *### * *### * 2000 .+#################################################################.net Just before giving birth to her son (Rocky--what's going on there?) Madonna said on an American radio station that she was going to have a child in a US hospital despite living in England. She claimed it was because we have old, decrepit hospitals whereas the US has gleaming, well-equipped ones. Fair point. Or at least a factual point. The problem is she just not comparing like with like. In the US if you have no health insurance and get a kidney infection, you go into debt to the tune of thousands of dollars. If you can't afford that, you die. Simple as that. You can't pay for treatment, you don't get any. Nice. In the UK, we have the National Health Service (NHS) which provides full, unlimited healthcare to anyone free at the point of use. No matter what your class, race or nationality, you will be treated for free. Really nice. It costs us Britains 100's of millions of pounds to fund it but the NHS is fair. The US system simply isn't. The private hospitals in the States are nice because of the huge profits made by healthcare providers while in Britain we have many Victorian buildings shoring up the NHS because it's 100% funded by taxes and everyone HAS to be treated. The French and the Germans have a similar system but have traditionally had stronger economies which lead to better funded and therefore "nicer" treatment centres. The NHS isn't just hospitals, A&E services etc. It's also Doctors/GP's in every community. Anyone can, for no fee at all, visit a locally accessable doctor in a fully equipped clinic and be examined and given prescriptions. He'll refer you to specialists (who'll also treat you for free) should it be necessary and purely on clinical grounds, not on the status of your health insurance. We do have to pay separately for prescription drugs but at a flat £5.95 (about $8.50) price regardless of the commercial value of the drug and a sizable proportion of people are exempt from paying anything. We also have District Nurses who carry out home treatment like Insulin injections and basic medical care. For free. A private health industry does exist. Bupa is the market leader and is not a business as such--all its profits are re-invested in its services because there are no shareholders. Some companies provide this private healthcare as a perk but the vast majority of people still use the NHS. So Madonna pissed me off when she ripped into our NHS. It's the pride of the nation, began in the late '40's, that, although its funds are spread very thinly, is a much more morally robust system than in the US. For Madonna to get such nice hospitals hundred of thousands of financially unfortunate people have had to receive inadequate treatment to fit their budget or run up debts larger than any mortgage over the years because even in hospital, the Dollar counts. .+########################################################################## anada204 by Schoolboy (c) 2000 ###################################################################anada.net