Cheerio Sicko
Stereotypes are bad…
…unless they’re kind of true.
For example, the old adage that British people have bad teeth could actually be based on fact. Their poor pearly-whites, as it turns out, can be blamed in part on Britain’s socialistic National Health System (NHS). Go figure.
As this article reports, dentists in the UK are pissed off and refusing to treat NHS patients. They claim that the government gave them the shaft in the last round of contract negotiations, forcing dentists to do more work for less pay. In response, dentists are either putting NHS patients at the back of the line or cutting them off completely. Yay socialism!
How are patients responding? They are either shelling out the money to get care at private practices, getting their dental work in other countries, like Poland, Hungary Thailand and Turkey, or they’re skipping care all together.
Maybe if we force Hillary (or any other advocate of universal health care) to take a gander at the Big Book of British Smiles we can avoid the fate of our redcoated kin.
Filed under: Profiles in Governance
Feb 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
It should be noted that while UK consumers are travelling to Hungary or Poland dental work, this is for high end cosmetic dental treatments that would never be covered by any form of socialized medicine. At the same time upwards of 100,000 US citizens travel to Mexico for treatment becuase they cannot afford basic dental care at home.
Feb 8th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Can you link to a source for those stats on Brits traveling to other countries for cosmetic dental work? Also a source for the US citizens traveling to Mexico?
In the article I linked to, the UK doctors are not just refusing to do certain procedures, they are refusing to take on new NHS patients–so those patients are having difficulty getting basic care. There’s also the 10% foregoing care all together.
Please don’t forget that in the US we do not, I repeat, do NOT have a free market for health or dental care (not by a long shot). So even if it is true that Americans have trouble getting basic care, the blame can hardly be placed on the free market. My post wasn’t in defense of the US system, it was simply intended to point out that the UK’s NHS is not the way to go.
Mar 25th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
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