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But unlike the US, Brits saw the problem, realized it wasn't fixable by tinkering around the edges and continuing to rely on a patchwork of poor houses, charitable institutions or the kindness of strangers.
Thus, the NHS, which is roundly condemned as inadequate, although people forget that it's inadequate mainly because Maggie and Major starved it for 17 straight years in a Tory effort to undermine the NHS and gain consensus for replacing it with US-style privatized medicine. Fortunately, the Brits kept their eyes on the prize which, in this case, is the complete absence of medical bills.
And as to whether health care is available for the most needy, I suppose you can make the case -- and many anti-single-payer, universal access foes do -- that ERs are forced to accept all patients regardless of insurance or other ability to pay. However, that's that most expensive, inefficient and unhealthy way to consume medical services. Since someone has to pay, and it sure as hell isn't going to be our fine for-profit hospitals, taxpayers foot the bill. It's inefficient because the ER is designed to deliver critical care to people in severe pain or with serious, often life-threatening injuries. Dispensing treatment for a serious but not acute chronic condition, say Hepatitis C, isn't what ERs are set up to do. And it's inherently unhealthy because it's impossible for patients to get ahead of the game through preventive practices, since the ER is reactive by its nature.
And re the various public health assistance programs like Medicaid, the qualifications are ridiculous, the coverage is minimal and not generally accepted by most docs, and they're the first things to get their budgets cut whenever the state needs to slash its budget -- this because there's no such thing as a Poor Peoples' Needing Medical Care for Non-Life-Threatening Afflictions Somewhere Besides the ER Political Action Committee -- while the for-profit vampires donate millions in campaign bribes to maintain the system from which they've profited so well.
Other than that, it's health care Nirvana here in the US.
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