Is this what the US wants (regarding public health care)

On the face of it, it sounds good. You have a segment of the health service for the poor and the penniless, where everyone can go no matter of their life's circumstances.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

And you look at the debate in the US about public insurance. No one should be left behind. Right? No one should be left behind in the UK either, but as with every "social service", you get things like this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...l-hit-Stafford-Hospital-escape-scot-free.html

Scandal? Well, yes, but also an indication of a root problem in these kinds of systems. The patients cease to be the key focus. The focus moves to the ones that has the money, and public health care becomes more about ensuring appropriations than about caring for patients

After all, in social health care, the ones with the money (and who pay the wages) sit in town hall, or the council, or the state.

This happens in my country too. There wasn't too long ago that a woman who was suffering the effects of cancer treatments got her benefits cancelled. The reason? Since she went out to bingo on Fridays with her friends, she could work, and was not entitled to benefits.

And it WILL happen in the US once insurance becomes mandatory, and becomes decided by bureacrats.

I'm sure plenty of politicians and bureacrats will crowd around TV-cameras and radio-microphones to promise investigations, and to ensure that the gathered reporters spells their names right.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...targets-ahead-of-patients-reports-warned.html

The background to the Stafford Hospital scandal.

Outraged? I don't think the ones I know, most of which I think have private care, would ever even go to an NHS hospital. Everyone wants to keep the system though. I mean, where else would poor people get health care?

ETA:

The final document, Developing, Disseminating and Assessing Standards in the National Health Service, by Rand, said that there was a concern the the Department of Health was more interested in costs than clinical quality and that assessments of health care seemed to be motivated by political rather than health concerns.

Click to expand...

From the second article, which illustrates the point I made in the first post. When you have a system similar to this, the interests of the organisation switches from patient care to institutional protection. The staff and leaders naturally look to the one with the purse strings. If the purse strings are not owned by the patients, then he patients suffer.