Why Brits wanted health care for each other and Yanks DON´T?

My health care loving family in 1948. We were all poor so it helps when decision making comes around to have that parity. No one was voting from a position of owning Lear Jets and Hummers and Cigarette Boats.

My mother and I had lived with my Grandpa in this house during the war. He was a photographer. Years later I found him dead in his favorite armchair in this very room reading the paper. My father had been away in the Navy in the Channel on minesweepers for my first three years. He was sunk several times. My Uncle Kenneth ´to the right´ was in the air force and survived to become famous in Sweden where a postage stamp showing two kids pulling a fir tree was issued with his name on it. He is still there. Bill in the middle was in Borneo and was never well again. He was institutionalized for quite a while. He was in the army. Peter is not in the photo but was also RAF and died fairly young in surgery for a bypass. I lived with my four uncles and mum at Grandpa´s in Heston which had a famous aerodrome and was a busy airspace. It is near Heathrow Airport.

We had survived the bombing by going to the Anderson shelter in the yard which was a corrugated metal construction that had been buried quite deep and held as many as were at home or the others got under the kitchen table. Mostly the boys were away. My mother would grab me and my Grandpa the petty cash box and flee to the yard when the sirens went off. It was damp and smelly but had tons of earth on top of it.

We were in the West side of London and I am presuming that the East side got the worst. Pictures seem to bear that out but the aerodrome certainly was a target. The worst thing about the ´doodlebugs´ was that they were designed as terror weapons and you heard their drone overhead and then they went quiet as they ran out of fuel and then a whirly screamer would accompany their ´dive´. It got louder it got scarier every second. Then they invented the V2 which was programmed to just reach certain targets and areas. Both very scary.

One should watch ´Atonement´ to get a feel for how that actually was. Also sleeping in the subway if caught away from home during an attack. That movie shows what happens when the Station takes a direct hit.

The Labour Government was in power when National Health started and I was much too young to really have any thoughts about it. I saw a great old movie from the library that depicts the times though and all I see in the movie is joy and relief. When nations are all in it together it makes such a difference. Everybody was broke. No one was ashamed to be so. They had survived a great ordeal. There was no such thing as a deadbeat which is an expression I abhor to hear so often here. There were broken men physically and mentally who received maximum care and consideration. There were no pointing fingers at spent minds.

It is also clear from that time until present time in the UK that no Government would dare to suggest the dismantling of the National Health Service. Once you have got a nation to pay its way in taxes to make sure that all her citizens are embraced by such a scheme then there is no going back. All those years of my being a driving instructor and paying high rates for gas and therefore having a smaller profit margin paid for many a treatment I am sure. I was way too busy to see a doctor after doing nine years in the army. I found a way to work 80 hours a week for a while and that was a lot of gas. I burnt myself out fairly soon but I never gave it a thought. I had three step kids and two daughters and my wife was a homemaker and health care was ´on tap´. I paid no attention to when they went to our local clinic right next to their junior school. The same nice doctor came to our home frequently. We did not associate him with a bill. He was a friend. He did not live a life style way above ours? He had two children with hearing problems. He was/is Indian. A great man.

I have had the opportunity to draw comparisons to the method of treatment between the two countries and with a family of seven, health care was always going to matter. I myself did not see the doctor that often and my wife could walk five minutes to the clinic that served our new area of Peterborough. We only had the driving school vehicle at first so the clinic so near was helpful. It was right across from the school where all five children attended. There was a dentist there for the kids also. They would get check ups. The rest of the clinic was arranged like this. Five doctors sitting in five surgeries. One nurse for stitches and such like issues. Two receptionists to get your medical records to the office of your doctor. Call up to get and appointment. Usually that day or in a day or two latest. Given a time of day between 8.30 and 2pm. Afternoons usually home visits. Arrive at clinic at prescribed time and wait no longer than 45 minutes. Coded color labels to determine the ´list´. Follow the last patient to your doctor´s room with which you are familiar. Get an examination or just a determination and leave with a prescription. Any need for emergency procedure or for a visit to a specialist at the hospital arranged. Leave and go across the road to Chemist to get medicine. Pay small sum or if over 60 free or if have a perpetual disorder then free prescriptions for life(Thyroxin).

In my 58 years I had treatment I waited a while for. I had lumps in my stomach. They were a nuisance but not painful. I saw a surgeon some time later and went in for the day and had sebaceous cysts cut from areas of my body. Mainly stomach and one in arm and one in thigh. They sliced and squigged them out. They were benign. They ranged from egg size to grape size. I went about three times over ten years to get rid of them. I also had found my moles to become a nuisance. What were considered ´nice´ when young had fattened out and become less nice? I had one that bled as it was on my beard line and one that I could see from the corner of my eye. I waited for about a year to have a first class plastic surgeon remove or ´core´ them and then do the most awesome stitches on my nose. You would never know and my two daughters have them at exactly the same places. I often wonder here in the states when I see pretty faces with lumps and fat moles? Some of them are not just unsightly but plain ugly. I am glad that I was able to get them fixed so easily and expertly.

My experiences here in the USA are not terrible although having to owe a bill to a doctor just terrifies me. There is so much plain ´luck´ involved. I hear Fox radio guy say that young people elect not to have insurance as they don´t need it? Oh really? Why then are so many lives controlled and ruined by traffic accidents and are they not one of the most likely categories to have an accident? Lives are changed here just by a wreck?

I was in trouble in Pensacola health wise in my first year here. My fiancé had painted a wonderful picture of life on the beach and pure tranquility. I saw in my first weeks when a young girl took her soft top to the beach and blew her brains out that it was an illusion. This girl with a hair lip and a husband remarrying was not content with the golden sands laid back lifestyle. My own position shifted with missteps from the immigration and my being without the right to work for so long. My relationship was dissolving daily and I stayed on a friend´s tiny sailboat to alleviate the tension. Trouble was that dirty water led to my contracting hepatitis before very long. I had to get myself to the hospital in the night with dark red urine.

After five days on a drip and several treatments and the removal of my gall bladder I had run up a bill of $35,000. My then wife was a LPN at the hospital. She had me covered just in time before I took ill and it was the only time I was ill and the only time I was covered just that one month from 2002 until 2005. When I look at all the misfortune I have had here with immigration etcetera I have to concede how lucky I was with not having that bill around my neck this last eight years. That is what is scary about the American situation.

The difference I see in the Brit mentality and the American one is mostly about compassion. Maybe the war and the experiences changed the mentality of Brits forever or at least for this period? I see Brits more content to be ´on a par´ with each other. I see as neighbors in Britain more time spent in each others homes and understanding others problems. It seems that the very lifestyle of the average American sets them apart and more wary of each other. They are less likely to know anything other than a name about their neighbor. They are more likely to know only those in their ´club´, be it spiritual or school or job. They are less affected by what happens outside their field as they are too busy to read about it and only hear it in church.

Americans are less likely to know what is going on in the world and what they should think about that. Many are on a tread mill that does not exist in the UK. Free health is a big burden lifted. Being sacked or being in a wreck is not that big a drama. Getting a divorce is not that a biggy either? The wage earner does not dominate as much as they do here? There is not the foreclosure or transient nature of depression in the UK. Bigger taxes have meant that there is more of a safety net to English life and less of a roller coaster existence.

Less millionaires no doubt. Smaller cars and houses. Living cheek to jowl. Fewer swimming pools and Hummers and Super Trucks and Lear Jets. Making do with less. Judging each other on character not wealth. Being willing to go without a bit more to allow the Government to set the lower standard of life style?

You are not going to ever see ´teaparties´ and ´townhalls´ to oppose the ´other people´ and to control who can sleep at night worrying what the future will bring to the poorer and unfortunate classes. You may need to get outside your box and step over the pond and look back at yourself and your country and your mentality when it comes to compassionate assessment of what people basically need to be really FREE.