Quote from: CoralHealth on February 24, 2018, 02:16:45 AM

Unfortunate to hear. Working in the US healthcare sector I often assume a rosy picture of the UK system but in reality it seems that all healthcare systems are dealing with very significant challenges that require fairly bold solutions. The US is still light years away from having the drug pricing controls you have in the UK.

That is true about drug pricing. Recently however there has been talk of making greater efforts to support and introduce generic drugs in order to upset those patent based monopolies some big pharma corps have. Also a better effort to reduce the degree to which people like Martin Shkreli can buy up stockpiles of drugs to give themselves price hiking monopolies over certain markets.

Quote from: European Central Bank on February 24, 2018, 02:43:11 AM

just like guns, i learnt a long time ago that there's no point talking to americans about healthcare. there's a blind spot there that'll never be cured. the american government spends more per head than most countries with health free at source yet still people die or go bankrupt because they can't afford the bills.

at the same time i'll guess these cuts are because of the lack of respect nhs users and providers have for public money. they never seem to figure out that ultimately it's their money and their neck on the line when they charge $1000 for ten toilet rolls.

I'm an american who will discuss healthcare or guns with anyone.

The problem with universal healthcare is, there is no competition to bring healthcare prices down. The state runs everything and there's no incentive for them to run things more efficiently. Rather there is considerable pressure for them to run things in an inefficient manner as this enlarges the profits of hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, doctors and whoever else within the status quo model of wealth redistribution to the wealthy which is often systemic in state run programs.

The problem with healthcare in the united states is, there is also no competition. Everything is centralized and monopolistic on a state by state basis. Like universal healthcare, there isn't the type of inter state competition in american healthcare for prices to come down or innovation to be made.

Really, there's no point in arguing about healthcare is bad everywhere and eventually people will realize that the media has misled and misinformed them as to what the important or relevent issues are.