Americans! You do NOT want national health care! Take it from one who knows!

by: sandra carney | published: 06 27, 2009

During my years as an American Citizen, for you see once upon a time I was not one, but during these years that I have enjoyed life in this great free country, I have also been the recipient of the best medical care in the world. Yes, funded first by my husband’s company and then after he retired via private insurance … expensive as it was, yet it afforded me the finest I could possibly hope for, for I am not a well person with a myriad of problems, ranging from heart disease to diabetes and a whole host of other problems including degenerating disc disease and acid reflux!

Well, enough about all that is wrong with me … the whole point of what I want to share with my fellow Americans is my experience under National Health Care … for yes, once upon a time I was a British Citizen.

First let me tell you about my father who died at the age of 68 yrs.  My father was ill, but he made that one last trip from England to come and see me here in the States.

You see, he had had a heart attack in May of 1989, and after a pace maker was rather crudely inserted into his chest, he was told that he had a blood clot in his leg.  Since he was on the South London quota system of Britain’s National Health Care [NHS], he was told that he could have his leg amputated in six months or wait for heart surgery 3 years down the road. Yes folks, three long years with a lethal clot in his leg.

Well, being a proud World War II warrior, a British Army Officer, one of Orde Wingate’s Chindits who had fought against the Japanese occupation of Burma and who had been shot at, wounded and captured by the Communists in the 1950s on the Burma China border, serving as a Lt. Colonel in the Burmese Army, there was no way this old war horse was going to give up this leg of his that he had so valiantly protected for over six decades.  He decided to wait out the three years!

Six months to the day of his diagnosis, my father died of a heart attack in my arms in my home in Mequon, Wisconsin.

Now my mother is an 86 year old widow. She has the usual problems that come along with age. In the recent past she was told by her NHS doctor that he could no longer prescribe Lipitor for her, as she had exhausted her full quota … he said that she had lived a good long life and it was time for her to give way to younger people who would be more productive. No amount of arguing with her doctor that she had never ever claimed a penny from the British Government’s welfare system, that she and my father had always paid their taxes or that no favor had ever been granted her, would soften the NHS doctor.  In fact he even defended the rights of illegals in Britain to receive medical care before her, a woman born a British subject!

Today, she finds it nearly impossible even to see her doctor.  She takes a bus or a taxi on days when she is really not feeling well, to wait in an NHS office, hoping to see a doctor. Sometimes she trudges the distance in the rain, for often she has to make the trip more than once before she actually sees the doctor – all this effort, just to get her prescriptions refilled. From what she has been told, there is no phone/fax/email communication between her doctor and the pharmacist.

My mother has had cataract surgery … she now sees blue/green colors from one eye and yellow/orange colors from the other.  Clothes shopping with her is … well let me say “an experience”, for she makes her decision always with one eye closed.  Some days she is in a bluish mood and then on other days she is in a sunny mood. Often the clothes go back, for her mood would have changed by the time she decides to wear the outfit!

As for me … I had my own glorious heart attack on St.Valentine’s day in the South of England.  You would think that Providence would have been kind enough to me to have at least let my heart do this to me in my beloved USA.

I have to be truthful … the one good thing about NHS is that when the ambulance came to my flat the paramedics were able to administer life saving Streptokinase to me following a phone call to the doctor. And then the doctor arrived and when he confirmed the diagnosis I was taken to the only NHS hospital serving S.W. England, where there was a heart facility. This was The Derriford Hospital and the year was 1995.

I was placed in a ward with numerous people … I can’t remember how many … 18 hours later, when I stabilized, I was bumped out of the room to make way for a new arrival, for the limited number of heart monitors were used in pecking order of who was the sickest!

I then went to a ward with five other women. They were all heart patients in various stages of decay.  One lady had been there for several months, waiting her quota turn to be taken up to London for her much needed bypass surgery. Another woman told me that she had been discharged numerous times, only to be brought back in again by the ambulance. She too was waiting her turn to go up to London for surgery, and on and on it went. Some of them were hooked up to very antiquated contraptions. I was so glad that I was not one of them for I was the lucky one!

You see I also had Private Health Insurance, supplied to me by my husband’s company. The Chief of Cardiology was my doctor. He visited me at least twice a day. I had the finest medicines administered to me and I was also attended to by other physicians and nurses throughout the day.

Most of the above walked with blinders on as they came to my bed at the far end of the room, hour after hour, day after day. The other patients were all NHS and did not get the special treatment that I received with my private insurance. Yes, during my better moments of cognizance, I did feel guilty for those other poor souls.

We had not a single heart monitor in our women’s ward. We were each other’s monitors! Whenever one of us felt ill, one of the others would ring the bell for help.

We six ladies also shared one toilet. Yes, you read that right … just one commode!
Heavens why am I complaining?  The poor men, all 19 of them, they too shared just one commode!

As for the shower room … ALL of us, men and women combined had one shower.  It was a rickety old thing from which some water dripped … there was a wooden stool for us to sit on while we showered.  Oh yes, there was one tub too … but as an American, I just could not bear to step into something that had somewhat of a vague resemblance to a modern bath tub!

As for the signage on the bath/shower room door … why it was a hand written piece of cardboard with brown string attached for hanging which read, LADIES on one side and MEN on the other. When one of us was wheeled into the bathroom, the nurse would turn the sign to let others know what sex was in there for “privacy.”

I had another privilege.  I got a menu every day. I recall the others were fed “Fish and Chips” on Friday … imagine that, greasy deep fried fish and chips in the heart ward! 

Eight days later, I was transferred across the road to a private hospital … The Nuffield. (The Nuffield had no heart facilities to cope with me during my first few endangered days). I called my husband from my luxurious room, en suite et al, to make sure I had not died and gone to heaven … I said “John, I am at The Four Seasons”.

Folks, is this we want in America?
Wake up people … please wake up!

Note:
The population of S.W. England is 5 million people.
“Derriford Hospital is a large acute general hospital serving Plymouth and nearby areas in Devon and Cornwall. It also provides tertiary Cardiothoracic Surgery, Neurosurgery and Renal Transplant surgery for the whole of the South West Peninsula.” 
Your health, your choices

Sandra Carney
June, 2009

comments

• Reply to this comment

  Phylis F.

  What a load of crap! It is obvious that you are completely brainwashed. It has been said to me that you were raised a Christian. Have you ever asked yourself ... What would Jesus do?
  How can you say all the things that you do if you are a Christian?
  It is obvious to me that you do not have any moral fibre at all and
  as long as you think this way we will all know that you do not care
  for humanity unless they have money. Keep thinking that way and
  and you had better hope to God that you never come on hard times and have to make do with nothing. ... because none of your Republicans will ever help you. Keep spouting the party line and see where it gets you when the world has woken up. I feel sorry for you.

  
  

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