Even though I am a Brit, I have had rather a lot of experience with the US healthcare system. In recent years, actually, as well. My experience is not so much with my own healthcare, but with the healthcare of my late American partner. I can attest to the fact that it is HORRENDOUSLY expensive, EXTREMELY profit-driven, and the outcomes are mediocre at best, especially when cost is taken into account.
In fairness to the system, in my experience with it, I can say with hand-on-heart that at its best, it can be very good; but at its worst, it can be awful. Within a relatively short period of time — roughly two to two and a half years — my late partner had to have a triple heart bypass and then, not long after he had largely recovered from the triple bypass, they discovered that he had tongue cancer.
The treatment he received for his heart problem was extremely good. But his treatment for tongue cancer was botched (in my opinion). In any case, alas, he didn't survive.
One of the problems with the American healthcare system is that, because it is extremely profit-driven, the patient is given one test after the other. And many of those tests are unnecessary. But they are administered because the doctor makes a profit from each and every test, injection, and treatment administered. Also, and very importantly, because the US is such a litigious country, doctors will never veer away from their protocols, even when they know it would be beneficial to the patient's well-being to do so. Then, there is the cost of the healthcare itself. I know from personal experience that even when a person is well-insured — and my partner was very well-insured — there comes a cut-off point at which the insurance company wants to pay no more for the treatment of the sick patient. At that point, the patient is kept comfortable and is allowed to die.
I am absolutely no fan of the US healthcare system. For all its faults, our NHS is so much better. At least here in the UK, falling ill won't bankrupt the patient.
On a slightly lighter note, I once had to use the services of an ambulance to take me to the local hospital 5 miles away when living outside Boston. That one-way journey of 5 miles cost me more than it would have cost me to fly home to London (from Boston)! – © Mark Alexander
