Posts tagged “healthcare”
Three years after first hearing Obama promise universal healthcare in Oakland, I watched him deliver on that promise. Not perfect, not fully universal, but the biggest healthcare reform in a generation. The optimism I felt that day in 2007 was justified.
I hurt my back in February and navigated six months of billing hell despite full insurance. The saga ended with a questionnaire assuming I'd be suing someone -- with no option to say the accident was my own fault. American healthcare is exhausting in ways that go beyond quality.
I spent 7 hours in a San Francisco ER today with an acute back spasm, which prompted me to compare the NHS and US healthcare systems firsthand. Surprisingly, it's a tie: registration hassles exist in both countries, and both treated me without upfront payment.
I can't give blood in the UK because I'm a gay man who's had sex. The National Blood Service calls it "behaviour based" policy, but that's just weasel words for discrimination. Sign the petition to overturn this ridiculous ban.
The US healthcare system is broken and inefficient, but the "Americans have no healthcare" argument is oversimplified. The US spends more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than almost any other nation, and extensive programs cover the elderly, poor, and veterans. The reality is more nuanced than the critics suggest.
Too busy to write a full post, so here's a half-formed thought: "gay" is a hard-won identity, not just a sexual behavior. The NHS distinction between identity and practice is actually meaningful, and collapsing them risks erasing what generations fought to define.
A new drug completely blocks HIV from entering white blood cells, dropping viral levels to undetectable. The catch: $20,000 a year, partly to recoup $600 million in development costs.
I have a throbbing dental abscess and 48 hours of agony ahead. The filling that caused it was done in Trinidad, which means no malpractice recourse, and I'll have to go back there for the root canal because at least it's cheap. On the bright side, French class is fun. Ow.
