America, Healthcare, Lies and Radio

So, apparently something is happening with healthcare in the USA.

This is something that I should have no knowledge of, since I live in the socialist utopia that is the United Kingdom. We in the UK exalt the NHS as the sacred cow of all sacred cows - making the NHS is the closest thing this country has to a national religion. The whole US healthcare comes across as rather perplexing to us, since the idea that you will be slowly die  from curable ailments due to a lack of funds seem like the worst possible state of affairs for any developed country. Of course, I know more than the standard English prole, largely due to my addiction to American public radio. There's a great wealth of material out there on how a savage illness can often act as the set-up to the real horror... the American health care system.

This is an interesting radio essay by Kairol Rosenthal. It underlines the dilemmas faced by Americans who suddenly get sick and find themselves without insurance. The radio piece draws you in from the beginning as Kairol goes through how getting cancer taught her "how to deceive and manipulate the health insurance system". The piece is darkly humorous, bitingly underling the chaos caused by being caught off guard by a sudden illness and demonstrating the need to do anything to ensure your survival when your life has been turned upside down.




Here's a captivating story from This American Life. It's probably one the funniest things I've ever heard on radio, but it has a killer blow towards the end which illustrates how being without insurance can throw you into a financial hell-hole.

I first came across the recent issues surrounding Obamacare's individual mandate by listening to NPR. (By the way - they have a fantastic 'NPR News' App, which is where I first heard this 'Individual Mandate's Growth In Unpopularity'story. The makers of the 'BBC News' App could certainly learn a thing or two, since the BBC app is clearly geared towards use on an iPad, with a focus on text and video. However, the NPR app is far more suited to a smartphone and is built as a convenient means of consuming radio content.) Anyway, here is a rather interesting 11 minute piece on the individual mandate, which makes it compulsory for the majority of American to buy insurance (something, which I have to say does sound rather questionable).



The full article, along with other related stories, can be found here at the NPR website:
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/31/149767228/how-did-the-health-care-mandate-get-here

The question which should be on Americans' minds is whether this act (and this provision) would prevent the above scenarios from being as financially strenuous as they were. The horrors the above radio stories would not have occurred in the UK under the NHS, but given that socialism is a dirty word it will be interesting to see how Americans will be able to provide safety nets for those who do not have health insurance.