Well, Vikarion - I at least understand what you're trying to say. You once mentioned that you lack empathy and emotional attachment to situations, and I think that may be colouring your words a bit.
I still understand what you're saying though, and I for one don't think you're a horribly evil person. I've wanted to slap you a few times in this thread, but that's normal in political discussions. 
Yeh. Wandering throught thread incoming!
In my fourth grade way of arguing a point,
people who get emotionally attached to a healthcare argument are people who have been emotionally effected /affected by the system - at some point it evoked a standing existing emotion.
A family member or friend couldn't afford care and suffered, and this makes someone angry and sad. Or they themselves are suffering, and this makes them angry or sad. That's basically how people get knee-jerk/emotionally invested in anything.
Healthcare can end up extremely personal, I almost want to use the word 'intimate' - as at the end of the day you are allowing someone else into your personal space and assigning trust to them over your body. You may not know what all those words on that patient information slip for all those drugs mean, you may only be readying the little colored tags hanging off of the bottles or boxes from the pharmacist/chemist, you might only have eyes for their white coat. (which for me better not be a short one, or I will degrade you openly in front of the nurses when you try and make a call in front of me -- research specialists/scientists are the WORST PATIENTS cause we dealt with those residents mussing up our labs.)
Though it is often said in the US that a patient should always remain in charge of their healthcare, especially these days -- like a puppy or kitten dropped onto a metal table at a vets office, most people flop out and surrender. The doctor knows something they do not, the patient is investing their trust, hopes, and future health in that doctor's care. We shop carefully for primary care providers. We research our surgeons and specialists - whether 'research' means looking up any work they may have done, or asking around in family and social groups for 'a good X-kind of specialist' - but that's as far as it goes, usually, as we have been slowly 'negatively reinforced' to avoid going further than a second opinion as such things start getting called 'doctor shopping' -= and then the doctors see that and go 'I'm already overworked, I'm not doing to deal with this asshole's internet phd.' The only reason I get away with openly challengng any of my doctors is when I tell them to look me up on Medline.
A major issue is that people aren't statistics - each person, though you can look at a list of symptoms and prescribe drug a,b,c for highest chance of success, until that 'statistical die' is rolled, which includes not only the drug itself, but the patient's biological system itself (which as I was taught, any biological system is 95% science and 5% witchcraft, as my mentor lovingly put it to cover that 'what the hell' that happens in any living system response to stimuli). at the end of the day, sometimes, medecine does not work.
And a medical diagnosis, holistically, is not simply symptoms. It is also the patient themselves as en entity, their social situation, their metal stability.
Yep. By that multi-axis disagnosis system, the meth-head was "unwell" before they took their first hit of meth. (watch things like The First Circle on Netflix for an idea of what I mean).
So yeh. We're stuck with a sieve method of who to treat and who to not treat because the healthcare system can't care for people it does not know are sick, or people who are "sick" one day and "well" the next (eggs are bad for you / no, eggs are good for you types of research), so people basically need to drop out of a pretty huge range of normal to be considered 'unwell' -- and once you're out of that range to get care in the US that isn't considered elective, you're actually pretty damned sick.
And as an aside, yikes people, I'm in palliative care. It's actually pretty damned good these days, despite my bitching, and I don't wanna die - i just wanna bitch about being stuck in it sometimes
. I still have a life to live, lol.
EDIT: I also want to add - I've also been treated by the NHS, when I spent 5 months in London. I'm not sure which I prefer, to be honest. The NHS feels like an HMO equivalent to me, which even in my state lends me a sensation of 'okayness'. You'll wait a lot for a specialist but you'll get treated. Dental is NHS subsidized, which is even better (as in the US Dentists are pretty much cowboys, and it isn't included in medical, for those who don't know - it is its own separate insurance plan. For all the dumb teeth jokes, Brits are better covered in Dental than Americans without dental are.)
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Topic: The Little Cough That Could (Read 16321 times)