Pulaski

Yes, obtaining health insurance through your employment, or losing it if you lose you job, is a "qualifying event" that enables you to stop or start health insurance. There are several other qualifying events, as you will learn when you read the details of any US health insurance contract - marriage, birth or adoption of a child, death of a spouse or child, change of job, and there may be a few others, are all grounds to end one health insurance contract and start another.

NYer

Also, I get tired of the use of the word "Democracy." America is a Representative Republic no matter how much some people wish otherwise or ignore the consequence of it, good or bad.

scrubbedexpat099

Agree

Anyway there is a time lag signing up for O Care.

NYer

Yes, every January they tell me I don't have any health insurance and what follows is a huge scramble, dealing with really slow state workers. Of course, I'm old enough to remember when doctor & hospital bills (the 70s) were inexpensive as were medications. A sad devolution thanks to greedy insurance companies, greedy pharms, greedy lawyers and their insane malpractice suits, lack of tort reform and an aging population.

adamas

Well, a representative republic is indeed one of the many forms of democracy. It is not a direct democracy, but people elect their representatives to take decisions for them, so I assume that most of the American people are, have been and will always be fine with healthcare not being universal.

adamas

Thanks, that is helpful.

scrubbedexpat099

You forgot the biggie, Politicians.

tooboocoo

They managed to get by without "universal" "healthcare" fairly well for over 230 years, so your assumption is not wildly unreasonable.

scrubbedexpat099

Obviously there are major problems in the UK, NHS only looks good compared to the US.

A quick read of the Guardian will bring you up to date.

There is a reason nobody else has copied the NHS, but to be fair it has metamorphosed into something the founders would never have envisaged.

adamas

Well, I totally agree with you about the NHS. I am not British, I have been living in the UK for just a few years and before in various European countries, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium...Based on mine and my family's experience, the NHS has been the worst healthcare system I had to deal with.

petitefrancaise

I agree that NHS doesn't compare that favourably with some European systems but then it costs a lot less in terms of GDP. BUT you haven't lived in the US yet and had to cope with the complete and utter mess of this bureaucracy.

Pulaski

I think most people are tolerant of the bureaucracy in the US so long as the system delivers an initial appointment within a day or two, a specialist consultation next week, and treatment, including surgery, shortly after that.

The NHS-style nonsense of waiting months for a consultation and months more for treatment/surgery when "the system" deems it "non-urgent" is AFAIK unheard of in the US.

GeoffM

Dunno where you get your healthcare but that rarely happens IMX with a few different insurers and hospitals/doctors/offices. Occasionally we can get a cancellation but psychologists for DS are booked out weeks ahead, and our regular doctors rarely have appointments available less than a week away. Our GP in the UK was suffering from massive numbers of no-shows so instigated a 2-day window for most appointments, which meant you actually saw your GP within 48 hours mostly - and the no-show rate went way down.

It might not be comfortable for the patient but it is more efficient than having doctors hanging around, waiting for non-urgent patients to fill the time. I had cataract surgery cancelled twice which was okay as emergency cases came first, and waiting another week wasn't going to hurt one bit.

Wifey is an ICU nurse (well, for one more week). The nurseatient ratio in California is 1:2; some states don't even have a requirement; in the UK it's 1:1. However, most days (in the US) she has more than 2 patients - and this happens frequently in all 4 hospitals she's worked. It's actually dangerous because if more than a couple of patients try to die at the same time, there are not enough staff around to recover them. But we pay the highest healthcare rates in the world so it must be better quality... right... ?

The NHS is imperfect, but the US model is far from perfect too.

SanDiegogirl

.... prior to Obamacare, by which you are probably going to be able to take out a short term policy, you would have not been eligible for any short term health cover at all in the US because of your pre-conditions.

Now that is the worst healthcare system to deal with .........

MidAtlantic

That is simply not the case. When we came in 2009 my wife had pre-exisiting conditions and we got short term cover. It did require a detailed medical report, but once that had been received by the insurer we obtained coverage at a slightly increased premium.

I agree coverage was not guaranteed so you could not be sure of getting it.