joto

I was refused a mammogram in the UK. I was about my mid-30's then. They said they were only doing them for people 40 and above. I explained that women younger than 40 get breast cancer and I didn't know the family health history as I was adopted, but that made no difference to them. Pissed me off no end. I could have been on the way to dying for all they knew or cared. Still didn't get a mammogram until I was here, before I was 40 Luckily all was well.

fatbrit

Well it either has to be regulated or run by the government. Because letting the blood suckers run it means we all die.

Ash UK/US

You mean like going to the ER and your insurance company being billed $500 for one IV pain reliever?

Ash UK/US

They typically don't do Mammograms here intil you are 40.
Edited to add...
A girl I work with who is in her 40, a single mother, works 2 jobs, cannot afford health insurance but does not qualify for assitance is on a waiting list to get a free Mammogram from a charity. Same woman also has not had a physical/pap smear in years because she cannot afford the doctors fee. A while back she got a UTI she treated it herself with lots of water and cranberry juice a few weeks later the Brazillian model died from a UTI.

meauxna

Lines have to be drawn somewhere, and if they are based on evidence, that has to be fine. We (collectively) can't pay to test everyone for everything every day.

BUT, if you felt strongly about this, why couldn't you pay for one for yourself, to satisfy yourself? That test runs $100 or less here if you pay yourself; it seems reasonable to me that those who want to use more service should pay for it individually.

I had my first mammo done at age 35, on my US health insurance. They like to take one around 35-40 to establish a baseline to compare future tests to.

Giantaxe

Factors equally applicable to the employment-provided insurance/Medicare system in the US.

nettlebed

Er, that's what's in store for us all anyway, unless there's something you folks aren't telling me...

fatbrit

Sally Redux

Is this a joke?

chartreuse

I thought they'd stopped using leeches, more or less.

Seriously, though, medicine is not and has never been fully regulated by the govt. Doctors are self-regulating, through their guilds, and there's been nothing said to suggest that that's likely to change.

fatbrit

Self-regulation by doctors is severely limited in the US. Most of the weeding-out of the incompetent and/or bent ones seems to come through the courts rather than their own bodies. Compare and contrast with other countries where bad quacks are more often struck off than rendered bankrupt or uninsurable.

But I'm not particularly worried about the doctors -- by and large they're a pretty and insignificant lot who'll do what they're told to do. Rather, I'm concerned about the government regulating health care, of which doctors play merely a peripheral role outside TV soaps.

The Horticulturalist

That's standard practice, even if you were considered high risk, a mammogram on a pre-menopausal woman does not always give a good result as the breast tissue is more dense.

scrubbedexpat091

Then you could say Canada's system isn't government either since most of the services we receive are from private providers.

Elvira

Food for thought:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html


The San Francisco Chronicle - October 11-15, 2004
IN CRITICAL CONDITION: HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA

In 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle published an excellent series of articles on our health care system - not much has changed since then:

Why health care costs are rising fast. Plus the Bush and Kerry health care plans.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGII96CVP1.DTL
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGII96D031.DTL

Retirees hit hard as health benefits are lost.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...UGMN979TS1.DTL

Health care tops the labor-management agenda.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...UGMN97GRD1.DTL

How Canada provides health care for all.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...GR28JFEN59.DTL

Employees are digging deeper to pay for health insurance.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...G7T8E81H63.DTL

Giantaxe

I was trying to make a distinction between government-funded, privately provided systems (like Canada and largely like Medicare in the US) and government-funded and -provided systems (like VA and the UK NHS). My point is that comparisons to the latter set are unlikely to be too useful data points given government-provided services are simply not on the political radar here.