40 replies to this topic

[Blodo]

Yeah, I did hear some good things about British doctors. For example people with all kinds of illness would rather go to France to cure it than stay at home. Those that do stay have had e.g. the wrong kidney operated on, etc. All kinds of wonderful things

[Torn]

Yeah, but they are minor cases tbh. And the fact that our healthcare is FREE, while you ALSO have the option to go private and pay to get better healthcare means England wins the healthcare prize.

I now also realise prescriptions are cheap here, some stuff for my Dad's stomach cost like £6 here, but in America when he needed it again it cost like $60, and also $150 to see the doctor in the first place. Ouch. It was funny when some big guy came in AGONY and then he didn't have his insurance card and had to go home. LOL. Owned. That wouldn't happen here, you'd get treated for nothing.

About the ear drum,, didn't you notice you didn't actually have an ear drum . Seriously though, that's fucking harsh. I feel sorry for you dude, seems like you had a butcher for a doctor.

EDIT: I don't like this topic anymore. Reading it makes my ear feel funny. Seriously.

Edited by Torn, 24 August 2006 - 03:35 PM.

[Ash]

Does that make you deaf in that ear, harriers? Sorry if this is touchy subject, but... =/


And yeah the American healthcare system is sick. I mean, if you were to get run over in the street and mortally wounded, what do the paramedics do? Check your wallet to see if you have an insurance card before they give you CPR and take you away to casualty? If you don't have one, what do they do? Just leave you there?

[chemical ali]

I've been private a few times, once to get my tonsils out when I was little, at Bupa but now my dads work brings free family medical insurance which is good meaning we can like use Bupa for things. I just wish they had private Accident and Emergency, NHS is worse than the traumer itself.

[Jeeves]

Australian doctors are ok near Melbourne, but if you up north...
Just if you wanna come here for treatment be quick, the fact they don't get paid is resulting in less and less doctors

[Hostile]

Does that make you deaf in that ear, harriers? Sorry if this is touchy subject, but... =/


And yeah the American healthcare system is sick. I mean, if you were to get run over in the street and mortally wounded, what do the paramedics do? Check your wallet to see if you have an insurance card before they give you CPR and take you away to casualty? If you don't have one, what do they do? Just leave you there?

For clarification, emergency room staff must service any medical emergency no matter what. This is what angers people about illigal immigration, they get sick and instead of going to a doctor they go to the emergency room. Then they have a large bill they never pay, and because they have no valid credit history and no social security number. Nothing more can be done.

No they don't check your wallet and leave you lieing in the street.

[Torn]

I've been private a few times, once to get my tonsils out when I was little, at Bupa but now my dads work brings free family medical insurance which is good meaning we can like use Bupa for things.

I've got Bupa as well, we'll use that if anything serious is needed. They used to give you massive bear cuddly toys when you were little .

[Ash]

I do love A&E. You snap your leg in half and you're in a queue long enough for the gangrene to set in before they actually see to you.

[ihateharriers]

let me start off by saying that the american healthcare system is absolutely fucking retarded. the average wait in an emergency is about 6-8 hours (no joke), and for some reason that applies to about anything. i can recall two occasions where emergency rooms simply did not know how to handle any situation, at all. the first was when my father had chest pains and we went to one of the hospitals in the city - he waited for 6 ours, with chest pains, and never saw a doctor - the only thing thta had happened was a nurse told him to get into that ridiculous hosptial gown and lay here. eventually he just left because he wasn't gonna wait anymore, and i'm guessing that a heart attack seemed more likely than seeing a doctor so he was just like, what the hell, i'll take my chances out there cause if my heart stops, someone will call an ambulance and he's gaurenteed to get treated then. the second occasion was about ten years back when i came down with some disease and had a fever of about 103. my mum took me to the emergency room and we waited for almost 4 hours, and one thing i remember is a mother who in there with a kid who looked 5 or 6 and was screaming at the nurses about about her son bleeding to death, but the tissue/paper towel around his finger had no blood - my guess is the kid got a papercut and his uber-protective mother freaked out and decided to take up valuable space at the emergency room. i finally go tot see a doctor and get some medication for whatever i had (prolly strep throat) as well as the fever.

as for my ears, after the eardrum was allegedly torn out, my hearing in that ear went to almost zero, but i could still hear a little from the soundwaves bouncing off of the bones inside the ear. once i got the eardrum replcaced, it went up quite a bit, but it will never be perfect, and for some reason i still hear better out my right ear, which is the one with the deteriorating eardrum. because of this, not only do i have hearing problems in general but problems with directional hearing as well - this doesn't in situations where the noise coming from someting within about 20 feet, but when my father and i go turkey hunting, i never know quite where the noise is coming from until get closer, usaully within about 200 yards. then i usually manage to do alright i also have to where earplugs wheni go swimming and shower because my ears can't drain liquids properly, which is the reason why the hearing loss started in the first place - when i was very young, maybe 2-3 years old, i was getting terrible ear infections all of the time, so the doctors sent me to a specialist who determined what the problem was, so i had my first surgery to put tubes in my ears (tubes are very small pieces of plastic that simply open up a hole in the ear drum, allowing for pressure behind the eardrum to be relieved, a problem that tends to follow with poor drainage) when i was three years old. right now my hearing isn't all too bad, there is hearing loss but not an amount that is so severe that i need hearing aids or something, but the biggest thing is that it will never be perfect, and there's a chance my ears will never be able to regulate pressure or properly drain fluids. some of my friends think that "oh it must be terrible ot not have perfect hearing" but they don't realize that i can't remember a time when i didn't have hearing loss, and for the most part now is pretty good because i can remember a time when my hearing was worse. it's really not as bad as it seems, and eventually you just get used to it. and trust me, i would more than happy to share my experiences and information with you because most of the people i know personally could care less about my hearing problem because it's just easier to make fun of me for saying "what" all the time.

[MSpencer]

let me start off by saying that the american healthcare system is absolutely fucking retarded. the average wait in an emergency is about 6-8 hours (no joke),

I've never had that problem, but then again I live near Boston, which is known as having some of the most numerous and best hospitals in the world. I don't think they're so great.

As far as prioritizing, generally they try to do their best, but you have to remember, as long as you drove or walked in, you're in a position to wait. Ambulance patients get treated first, then the pale looking walking wounded. It's a general rule of hospitals in the United States that they're terribly understaffed as far as nursing. Parent companies, one of the big ones being Partners Health Care, which owns many of the hospitals in the Boston area, refuse to train or pay nurses adequately, and as a result, many end up leaving in disgust. Doctors can't do their job without adequate support, something denied by many of these companies in their "You're on your own" policy. People also commonly die because they send in untrained nurses without experience in to do things they're not qualified for.
I know a nurse, after a glass of wine she rants a lot.

[crave22]

this doesn't in situations where the noise coming from someting within about 20 feet, but when my father and i go turkey hunting, i never know quite where the noise is coming from until get closer, usaully within about 200 yards. then i usually manage to do alright

Damn, you go for turkey with that? I sometimes can't even tell where the birds are coming from without that problem. I'll tell you right now, you're a better hunter than me. I'm usually found just sleeping on post, gun laying nicely across my legs. Funny story from last year's deer season, actually. But this past turkey season sucked down here. I heard maybe two or three birds one day of the entire season. They just got into the thick stuff and shut right up, I s'pose. That or they already had hens. How was it up by you?

Sorry for dragging the thread, but it was time someone came along and did it.

[Torn]

Turkey hunting... wtf.... .

[chemical ali]

Thats leathful hunting with guns and being deaf, shotguns arnt that bad its when your hunting with rifles that its bad in woodland. Shotguns are useless after about 40 ft, .303 bullets from rifles can go for miles.

[ihateharriers]

this doesn't in situations where the noise coming from someting within about 20 feet, but when my father and i go turkey hunting, i never know quite where the noise is coming from until get closer, usaully within about 200 yards. then i usually manage to do alright

Damn, you go for turkey with that? I sometimes can't even tell where the birds are coming from without that problem. I'll tell you right now, you're a better hunter than me. I'm usually found just sleeping on post, gun laying nicely across my legs. Funny story from last year's deer season, actually. But this past turkey season sucked down here. I heard maybe two or three birds one day of the entire season. They just got into the thick stuff and shut right up, I s'pose. That or they already had hens. How was it up by you?

Sorry for dragging the thread, but it was time someone came along and did it.

it was really the same thing up here - my family has exclusive hunting rights on over 120 acres on private land that is just crawling with grouse, turkeys, and some really nice deer, and for some reason the turkeys were real quit this year. there were two occasions in which we heard a turkey gobble once, and then would just quietly sneak up on us, one of which we were set up and i sort jumped the gun on a real big tom, which was a bit of a bummer. other than that, same thing - they would be fussy about crossing a stream of water 6 inches wide, they would see brush and stop, or they were all henned up, even in the late season. it very stange because usually they are henned up for a week in the middle of may, and then they get aggressive again. there was a good hatch up here last year though, so my guess is there's just too many turkeys right now.

Thats leathful hunting with guns and being deaf, shotguns arnt that bad its when your hunting with rifles that its bad in woodland. Shotguns are useless after about 40 ft, .303 bullets from rifles can go for miles.

i would have to say that your wrong there, ali - since rifles have a highr muzzle velocity they have more a "crack" sound to them, whic doesn't seem to resonate well, where as with the 12-gauge shotguns we hunt with you can hear them for about 10 miles, and that's how you always have the story of the idiot on the opening day of turkey season who takes 5 shots at a turkey and misses every time.

as for the problems that plague american healthcare, the biggest is probably that all hospitals are privately owned, and therefore a business, and the people that run them are profit hungry, therefore it costs $3000 for a CAT-scan and there aren't enough doctors and nurses to go around. and the 6-8 hour emergency room wait is bad here in Syracuse because there are 3 hospitals all within a stones throw of each other, and they are always buying the latest, most expensive equipment so that you will go there instead of the other two, so what happens is they are always cutting staff and then the staff go on strike so you are always shothanded, and therefore unable to properly handle the amount of people who go into the emergency rooms. plus, the areas surrounding Syracuse are very coutnry-looking, plus we have 4 or 5 major rivers within about 20 miles, and this for some reason tends to attract old people and therefore retirement homes, which are basically revolving doors, if your catching my drift. i live about 100 yards from a "retirement apartment" and there's usually an ambulance up there about 2-3 times a day taking somebody to the hospital, so you combine all of these factors together and you have one hell of a messy situation.

[MSpencer]

Dick Cheney managed to shoot someone in the face and he wasn't even deaf.

[Ash]

Hahaha, can you find that animated gif of him shooting loads of stuff and even blowing up the world?

[crave22]

Heh, there you go.

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[milbot]

Healthcare here in Belgium is amongst the best in the world. Here your visits at the doctor mostly get payed back, same thing with hospital stuff that is neccesary.

[Ash]

*Jumps for joy*

I love that pic. Cracks me up every time...

[Comrade Kal]

When I went to france, my cousin got stung by a bee and had an allergic reaction. We drove to the hospital and there were a load of doctors there waiting for him! Actually standing waiting!