Healthy debate

A three-and-a-half-thousand mile perspective on the current debate in the U.S. about health care can make the whole thing seem like some sort of political pantomime played out on the nightly news bulletins. Living in a country which, for more than 60 years, has had ubiquitous health care free at the point of use (or as near as makes no difference), is a far more significant barrier to understanding the issues than distance. I wonder how many in this country stop to realise how fortunate they are.

A package on this morning's Today programme brought it home to me in a "WHAT?" moment of epic proportions.

The article concerned a regular working mum in the US (so I should probably say mom?) for whom one thing separates her from most other regular working mums. Her medical condition: rheumatoid arthritis. Her health insurance allows her one course of treatment per year costing $500. Unfortunately a year's supply of just one of the medications she requires to alleviate the pain from her crippled hands costs $50,000. As a direct result, she lives with constant pain.

I didn't quite catch whether or not this was directly related to the problem with her hands, but she was recently dug out of a car wreck in which she almost died, and found an ambulance waiting to take her to hospital.

Shaken from her near-death experience and having sustained several injuries, she was nevertheless reluctant to step into the ambulance. She knew she couldn't afford the trip to hospital, let alone the treatment when she got there.

A single ambulance ride costs $11,000.

That was the double-take, jaw-dropping moment for me. First, a silent prayer of thanks that if I'm ever unlucky enough to have a significant car wreck, and lucky enough to be pulled out alive, the last thing I'll have to worry about is the trip to ED. Because our ambulance service, much maligned as it often is, doesn't cost a penny. But second: how much? $11,000?!? How on Earth can one trip by ambulance have that kind of price tag. Someone, somewhere, is raking in an enormous, toe-curling and utterly immoral profit from that, while ordinary people standing beside their written-off vehicles try to work out whether they can afford to be taken to a place of safety and given the treatment they need.

And this, in what is supposedly the richest nation on Earth.

A nation now engaged in an almighty bickerfest of shouted half-truths and vested interest, trying to protect the profits of those health insurance companies at the expense of that nation's most disadvantaged citizens. Wake up people. Someone said that most of middle America is only a single accident away from bankruptcy. It could be you tomorrow.

Thank God for the NHS. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it needs reform. Yes, it's been allowed to bloat until it is, apparently, the world's fourth largest employer at approximately 1.3 million staff. But for all its faults it will be there when you need it most, and whether or not you can afford it.