12:11 pm: UK to US: The Truth About the NHS!
Signed the petition, added a comment:
My grandfather lived long enough for me to remember him because an NHS surgeon performed a quadruple bypass on his heart when I was two. My dad is still alive and well (and able to see and to bake his own bread) at the age of 82 because NHS surgeons performed operations on his wrist, his eyes, and his heart, in the past five years. I've had regular visits to my GP and to consultants over the past two or three years to establish why I felt like I had a perpetual cold in the head: turned out to be a dust allergy, for which I get regular medication and pay £104 a year for all my prescriptions. I would have been functionally blind since I was 7 if not for NHS eye-tests and free NHS specs till I was 16: I pay for my lenses now I'm working full-time, but when I was a student or looking for work I could get free lenses when I needed a replacement prescription. The NHS keeps me healthy, keeps me sighted, keeps me free: the US corporate control of healthcare is not only evil, it's inefficient and stupid.
Update: Wow. I think the petition went up this morning and there were over 10,000 signatures by the time I signed it: at 17:11 today there are
29,740 30,369 signatures.
Current Mood: 
chipper
,
evil americans advertising against nhs,
family stuff,
my health,
nose of a nose
![[User Picture]](http://www.insanejournal.com/userpic/185814/44799) | | From: | ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yonmei |
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| Date: | dayordAugust 2009 01:14 pm (UTC) |
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It took me a bit before I could get the comment window to work, and I noticed that all the while I was typing the above, new comments kept appearing - it's up to over 18000 now, it wasn't yet 11000 when I posted. I think that's at least a sig a minute!
According to
Avedon at Sideshow, Barack Obama's health care plan actually seems to have more concern for the health insurance companies than for the patients. I don't think Obama's really that reliable. He's certainly not going to associate himself with Michael Moore.
FDR couldn't get elected President today. Most national posts would also be out of the question. I can count on one finger the number of Democrats who definitely have a spine (that would be Barney Frank), and he'll never get into any elected position higher than the one he has.
I don't think the system itself is irreparable; our people are just so stupid and conservatives are much better than liberals at appealing to stupid people and getting stupid people to do what they want them to do.
Btw, love your icon.
Well, to be fair, American conservatives have so much more money and their own home-bred Goebbels types (Rove, certain churches) to persuade the ignorant poor into voting against their own interests. Nice liberals have neither the complete cohesion nor the dollarpower to make an effective stand against that sort of thing :(
And hee, not "my icon" as such; I saw
this graphic on Smirking Chimp and fell in love!
