On a recent holiday I experienced quite the slew of accidents. I cracked my head open on a cave passageway -- requiring three stitches -- and acquired a brutal foot sprain on a slippery sidewalk.
Needless to say, I was in need of some proper medical attention upon my return home to London.
Seeing as I don't have any big-profit, private health insurance from the profiteers at Aetna or Cigna, however, I was forced to bite the bullet and take Mitt's health care advice (Thanks, Mitt!)
So, I prepared myself for the dire NHSocialist death panel and hopped a socialist underground train from the socialist airport (complete with socialist lifts to move from socialist station to socialist street) in order to arrive at the NHSocialist Guy's hospital, which also happens to be the tallest hospital building in the world. Or, at least that's what the socialist propaganda posters advertising the hospital's socialist renovation (revolution?) told me upon my arrival.
At the hospital, I was not directed to the 'Accident and Emergency Room' -- reserved for serious shit like heart attacks and detached limbs -- but instead to the 'Minor Injuries Unit' (MIU), which services those afflicted with, well, minor things like a sprained foot.
You see, when everyone is covered by the same health policy and thus able to visit any doctor at any facility at any time, it's possible to engage in the provision of health care in a logical, cost-efficient and patient-friendly manner. My foot sprain wouldn't be holding up anyone with a heart attack, and I wouldn't be waiting for the heart attack victim before I could see someone about my foot.
So, at the MIU, which was empty save one other patient on a Friday afternoon (when was the last time an urgent care centre in the United States was empty?), I dropped by the desk, showed the friendly ladies my NHSocialist card (probably not necessary, but I'm so used to having to show a big-profit insurance card), explained my problems and took a seat.
Before the death panel could even convene, my name appeared on a computer screen and I hobbled myself to consultation room #5 in which a young doctor was waiting to see me.
She quickly removed the stitches from my head and then had a look at my foot, confirming that it was just a sprain (not broken, thank God!) and offering some tips for its care. Because this was the NHSocialist MIU and not a big-profit American hospital keen to defraud the government (aka 'doing a Rick Scott'), an unnecessary foot x-ray was not taken. (And before you think she was just trying to ration care let me confirm that indeed my foot was just sprained and had no swelling, which would indicate a broken bone.)
So, in less time than an American urgent care centre (or any health facility, come to that) could charge me $300 for the privilege of a foot check and the 'outpatient surgery' of stitches removal, I was off on my way, pausing for a second to make a phone call from the up-market coffee bar in the NHSocialist hospital lobby.
Let me repeat that: it took less time for me to check in, wait, and be seen by a doctor in the NHSocialist facility, than it normally takes in a big-profit American medical facility simply to deal with the insurance card and pay the bloody bill.
So, don't let some idiot like Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini tell you that dysfunctional American health care is all about the 'high cost of care' -- it's not! It's about the insanity of employing hundreds of thousands of corporate bureaucrats to file paper and push money around in a decentralized, free market vacuum.
In the words of Walter Cronkite, America's health care system is 'neither healthy, nor caring, nor a system'.
So, Cheers Mitt, for the advice, but the only reason your advice worked was because I live in England, not America.
As the NHSocialist system demonstrates, government isn't the boogeyman in health care, private pseudo-bankers that call themselves 'health insurance executives' are the devils in America's health care nightmare.
Medicare for all, anyone?