Cannock Chase Hospital and Stafford Hospital are both operated by Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) in Staffordshire, a landlocked county more or less in the middle of England.
It’s where you go in that part of the U.K. to access your government provided health care.
Here is what it says on the website shared by these two hospitals about breast screening.
What is the NHS Breast Screening Programme?
The Programme makes sure that if you are aged between 50 and 70 we will invite you for breast screening. We will get your name from your Primary Care Trust record. This record is made up from your doctor’s list so it is important that your doctor always has your correct name and address.
We invite doctor’s practices for screening in turn. So you will not necessarily get your invitation in the year that you turn 50. As long as you are registered with a doctor, we will invite you for breast screening before your 53 rd birthday.
We will invite you? As in, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you?”
Any woman who has a mother or a sister that suffered breast cancer immediately sees the problem with this. If you have a family history of breast cancer, sitting around until age 53 waiting to be “invited” could spell an early death.
I am not making this up. If you didn’t follow the link above, follow it here.
If this doesn’t chill you to your core, you have ice water in your veins. The British National Health Service rations mammograms by making women wait for an invitation to be screened for breast cancer. Inevitably, some invitations will arrive too late.
By contrast, if you are a 34-year old woman here in Tyler and are so inclined, you can probably get a mammogram somewhere here in town before lunch. A few months ago, my wife got a mammogram on literally five minutes notice while she was at the mall. (And she paid for it out of her pocket.)
For whatever you want to say in criticism of American health care, when it comes down to it, which would you choose? Paying out of your pocket or arguing with your insurance carrier on the one hand or on the other hand waiting for some employee of the government to “invite” you to receive a screening that might, when completed, have been done too late to save your life?
Americans are starting to understand this and that’s why the whole health care reform effort is underwater in the polls by double digits. Yet, Obama and the Democrats press on.
They persist in telling you that you won’t have to give up your health insurance if you’re happy with it nor will you have to give up your doctor. Don’t believe it. What they are proposing sets the groundwork for the federal government to unavoidably become the sole payer of health care costs. That’s because when everybody, by law, must have access to the same level of health care regardless of how much or how little they pay, demand will exceed supply.
When the train wreck happens, the government will inevitably step in and before long, you’ll find yourself sitting around waiting for your invitation.
Imagine if the market for 52-inch plasma TVs was managed in the same way. If you think you could go to Don’s TV or Best Buy this afternoon and pick one out, think again.
And while you’re thinking, don’t think that rich liberals are going to be waiting on their invitations. Already, somebody somewhere is no doubt drawing up plans for the poshest of posh health care resorts in some place like the Caymans at which Nancy Pelosi and Jennifer Aniston will get health care of a quality that will be unavailable anywhere in the U.S. to you and me.
The arrogance of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and their acolytes in pursuit of this disaster is unlike anything I have ever seen.
The American people don’t want ObamaCare and they have said so loudly and clearly. Somewhere in here, the number of American people that are tired of not being listened to is going to reach critical mass.
When families and businesses are struggling to survive, arrogance from those we elected to serve us is particularly intolerable.
Of course if you are the working poor or have no insurance you can’t get this service whether you are 34 or 53.
I too, do not want Obama care but the current situation does a disservice to poor, working families, where the only place to obtain care is in an ER.
I disagree with the previous poster. There are several clinics in the area. One in particular was a clinic that my 20 yr old nephew with no insurance and in college on his own went to it was a $60 office visit and he left with a prescription. Now $60 is more than my $20 co-pay but far less than the cost of an ER visit. I think that it would make sense if the Hospitals in the are operated more Non Emergency clinics so the burden would be reduced on the ER’s. And the Term working poor is a misnomer. I work 2 jobs and my wife works. I shouldnt have to keep doing that so that others can have benefits. I shop with adds and coupons and I frequently see “working poor” whip out their Lonestar Card while talking on their cell phone, then lighing up ciggaretts while loading groceries into a nicer vehicle than I have. Only in todays America can folks with money for ciggaretts, cell phones and cars can be called poor.
Please Mr. Smith, show me a clinic where my wife can get a breast exam for $60. I’d get a better job and pay for it myself, but I lost my legs in Vietnam, so don’t preach to me from the comfort of your sofa.
All this talk of personal responsibility but I wonder how many people here would feel a responsibility to pay more tax to pay for the current wars.
The Problem and the Solution to Health Care
In the last 4 generations our government has run MAJOR federal 4 insurance and financial companies, broke or on the verge of broke. Care to guess? Buy a vowel? How about:
Social Security
FDIC
Medicare
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The details that concern the above institutions are indefensible. Our government has run them….BROKE!! Now they want to run (preferred) or prescribed how to run(alternate, they may settle for such) the insurance industries that for a long time have done it at a profit??? Heart trouble runs in my family. They want to tell my cardiologist how to care for my heart? They will ‘broke’ my heart…..and yours!!
The answer to the political question is (or should be) in Spring of ’10 is do NOTHING! Take Easter break and hold 10 town meetings if you have large enough body parts to do so; we will show up! When we do, LISTEN TO US!!!
The biggest percentage ‘denier’ of health insurance claims is….wait for it, here it comes…….MEDICARE! Only one insurance company is in the same zip code of the Medicare denial rate! There’s more to come if they will hold town meetings and LISTEN!
The practical solution includes tort reform. About 25% of health medical practice is ‘defensive’ in the sense that doctors have to cover certain of their body parts, becase of fear of lawsuit or litigation. It also includes making sure that competition is enhanced, choice is broadened (without any new government option, it too will go……you guessed it), and realization that everybody can’t be covered for everything AND that not everybody wants or needs it!
Until smart business people and a good sampling of the insurance industry are HEARD and utilized as part of the solution, our government will continue to run things as they did the 4 institutions above. I’d have to change my pants if I were to consider how much of hardworking taxpayer dollers were squandered by our government in running the ‘Big 4’ BROKE! NO MORE!
Truth Talkin Texan
Mr. White,
I was not preaching. I was refering to normal office visits. All too many people utilize the ER for things that are not emergencies thereby driving up the cost for whomever foots the bill. I am a veteran and so was my brother who lost a leg from the knee down and my father who served 3 tours in Vietnam so I value and thank you for your service. It may be in this debate that the poor choices and misuse by somefolks have cast a cloud over everyone.