An old teacher of mine in the UK is going to France for hip replacement surgery.

If he's your old teacher why not ask him yourself, OP?

because he's busy getting a hip replacement and I figured he had other things on his mind than fielding questions from a student he taught 13 years ago.

He can probably afford to go private in France rather than wait. *Shrug*.

Does it matter?

Example; I got drunk many years ago and fell down a flight of stairs. I got a free ambulance ride to the ER. I had a broken jaw and lost a tooth and had to have surgery on my wrist and a rod inserted. The X-rays, hospital stay and surgery were all free. As was the physiotherapy I required for months after the incident. The dentist was free as was the replaced tooth. On top of that (this happened at least 15 years ago) I recently went back to have the tooth next to the fake once looked at and that was free because the original dentist made a note that the front 3 teeth were affected.

Any problems related to that fall will be covered by the government for life.

Now - my mum got diagnosed with bowel cancer and went to a private hospital. Why?

Well, there is a wait for specialist care. There is no debating that. She had paid for health insurance her whole life (specialist care) so used it to go to a private hospital and get looked at straight away.

Americans hate the NHS of the U.K.

I get the feeling this is a "socialized medicine is bad, m'kay?" thread . . . .

[quote] because he's busy getting a hip replacement and I figured he had other things on his mind than fielding questions from a student he taught 13 years ago.

If he has time to Tweet, surely he can respond to a DM.

Simple really, joint replacement is not treated as an urgent complaint and therefore people are expected to wait upwards of 2 years. Sometimes sent on a ridiculous cycle of physio treatment in order to further delay proper diagnosis and treatment.

My co-worker's relative had to wait almost a year to see a specialist. He's on pain killers. He needs to have both hips replaced but one is worse than the other and the MD said only one will be done. And now he's gotta wait probably another year for the operation. He paid into the health insurance with his taxes all his life. It's not free.

OP, how old is your friend?

France also has “socialist” medicine troll.

I have known at least a dozen people in the US who have had knee and/or hip replacements. The minimum wait time here is about 6 months,often much more, and yes, most are told they must first undergo physical therapy to see if that fixes or improves the situation. Overweight people are usually told that they have to lose X amount of weight before surgery - often 50 to 75 pounds - otherwise the surgeon won't guarantee the work. So I'm not seeing the drastic difference between the NHS and the system we have in the US.

r8 I'm not sure I'd guess he is like 70 or so? Maybe less.

r6 the tweet wasn't done today smart ass at r6

I am in France now and can say the standard is very high and the costs aren't bad. I had an endoscopy with anesthesia in a private clinic and it cost about €600. On the other hand, a friend was in hospital in the UK and she said that every woman on her ward was there due to a medical mistake.

My next door neighbour had his hip surgery done privately, which cost him a small fortune. They fucked it up. He could barely walk afterwards without the aid of two walking sticks and became listless and depressed. He then had it corrected by the NHS about 8 months later and he can walk fine again now.

Big pharma and insurance lobbies have brainwashed American minds.

That would be NHS England OP - you know the one Mr Hunt, the Health Secretary is so keen to sell off to private providers. We’re actually doing OK in Scotland.

In Belgium there are a lot of Brits who go to hospitals in Brussel for knee and hip surgery

What? You mean the Brutish aren't bankrupted by medical bills? They dont have to argue with insurance companies about coverage? Why that's downright unamerican!

OP, he's actually having gender reassignment surgery and wants to have some privacy.

OP, to get a hip replacement on the NHS means a long waiting list unless it's an emergency.

However, this ex-teacher of yours is being somewhat disingenuous about the situation in France. While there are generally shorter waiting lists for most things, this sort of treatment would not be available as part of the state healthcare system to someone just flying in from another country, it'd only be provided in an emergency.

Which means either he's paying privately - in which case it doesn't make any sense to compare it to the British NHS since private surgery is also available there - or, more likely, there's no ex-teacher and you made it all up.

In some areas at one time the NHS was funding operations on mainland Europe because of long waiting lists. Not sure if that still happens but if so then that might be the case here. The French system is fantastic although I believe you have to pay upfront for some consultations which might put some people off. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[quote]I figured he had other things on his mind than fielding questions from a student he taught 13 years ago.

And yet, you had nothing else on your own mind.

Work at state agency in Texas. Someone I worked with who was on our HMO was diagnosed with throat cancer. His primary told him when she saw his throat to be prepared it was cancer because his throat was gray. From the time he went to the oncologist to the time he started to receive chemo and radiation was three months! Three months to get treatment. So yeah, here in the US you have to wait to get cancer treatment.

Is this the same teacher of yours that is going to America for a circumsision? Troll

I believe in health insurance for all. But my experience in the US in a major city is the ability to get top notch care almost immediately for cancer. I would not want to live in UK/Ireland and get aggressive cancer. If you have decent health care insurance and are aggressive in pursuing immediate care, you get some of the best care in major US cities.

Unfortunately, it is unequal like everything in US. Though this private insurance stuff in U.K. sounds awfully similar to the US. The exception is everyone gets at least basic health insurance.

My friend was diagnosed with bowel cancer and the tumour was removed within 10 days of the diagnosis, by the NHS.

The public health system is by no means perfect. But if you are unemployed or just plain broke, it's a nice safety net. No-one I know would want to have the American system. A lot of people here pay $30 a month for specialist care private insurance.

But again - if you are diagnosed with a serious illness and you don't have insurance you know that you at least have good chance.

Also, our medications are subsidised. So anti depressants, Ritalin, heart meds etc tops out at $5.

That's $5 for the whole prescription btw, not per pill.

It's not so unusual to go to another European country for private, non-emergency treatment if it's cheaper there. For anything urgent or serious, the NHS is excellent. I was treated for skin cancer this year and was referred within 10 days and the surgery was done in a matter of weeks, obviously without any bills or paperwork etc to deal with. I do have private health insurance as a work benefit, but I didn't use it for this because there wasn't much point. It would have been more hassle and no quicker or better.

Every time this question comes up the answer is always the same.

The NHS is very good for routine matter. These days routine includes things like basic heart attacks, cancer treatment and AIDS.

But study after study shows, all of Europe lacks advanced medical treatments. I would be surprised at someone choosing France over the USA, which is literally miles ahead of every other nation in any medical treatment that requires medicine at the forefront. France does have research centers which do procedures that are very "out there," such as blood cleansing for AIDS and clone research, so perhaps the diagnosis is dire.

This is why India can do cheap medical procedures. They don't have any domestic research, they simply appropriate all American technologies. This is the same in Brazil and South Africa and all of Southeast Asia. And places like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, pay a license fee but they only pay on average about 10% of what it's worth.

Simply look at AIDS, not even 20 AIDS meds were developed outside of the USA and those were of those developed inside the US less than ten were developed by non-profit or governmental groups.

Big Pharma and their Republican leaning companies are responsible for almost every AIDS victim being alive today.

This is why America costs, for every thousands failures, you'll get one success.

The NHS is a highly ideological issue in the UK. Despite the fact that it is heavily centralised, over-bureaucratic and sometimes Kafkaesque (in my experience of my father's "treatment" for cancer) and needs serious reform, it's almost impossible to do because any attempt to improve it is immedidately rejected as "privatisation". Most national health systems (what Americans weirdly call "socialised medicine") in Europe seem much more flexible, offer patients choices the NHS doesn't, and also in some countries a choice in service provider.

As a result, most other European countries not only have more effective national health services, they also have a much cheaper private health provision, which in the UK can be extortionate and low quality (see the posts of r13 and r14).

UK expat here. I prefer the US system BUT only because I have a good job with excellent benefits. If I didn't have those benefits then of course I'd prefer the NHS. The NHS suffers from a lack of doctors/nurses and a glut of patients, some of whom haven't paid into the system at all or very little. That sort of system isn't sustainable. Hammond is now searching the settee cushions for the £20 billion May promised to the NHS for its 70th. He's thinking about scratching the Tory manifesto pledge for tax cuts, and sneaking in a higher VAT on small businesses.

OP Are you sure that your teacher is having to pay for his hip replacement himself?

It isn't uncommon for the NHS to pay for patients to be treated in other countries if waiting lists are too long.

There is a whole NHS department that administers the 'S2' scheme.

So you're asking about someone, who lives in a country with socialized medicine, traveling to another country, with socialized medicine, for surgery?

In terms of filght time/ distance it's the equivalent of somebody who lives in New York going to Washington DC for treatment at most.

R35 In terms of distance, yes. And that's where the similarities end. It's someone going to a different country, with a different language, and a different healthcare system.

R36 is for R34 and R35.

Tracey Ullman was on some show recently doing an interview and said she was having her physical done in LA. She prefers being checked out by the US health system over the UK. She literally flies back.

I'm R34 Any citizen of the EU has the right to seek treatment in any of the other member states if they so wish. The NHS will still foot the bill.

R38, because she can afford it. A lot of people can't afford the top notch US medical care cited. Universal healthcare provides a safety net for nearly all citizens.

R39 Not completely true. Certain countries restrict procedures and reimbursement isn't guaranteed. There's a lot of organising and planning that needs to go into a UK citizen having surgery in another EU country.

R41 oh okay. thanks for the clarification.

I had knee replacement in the US r10. Once it was determined my knee would not heal and had deteriorated beyond repair, it took three months to have my surgery. What you describe isn't happening where I am.

[quote]Big pharma and insurance lobbies have brainwashed American minds.

Yep.

I have an Aetna plan through work; the plan I have has out-of-network benefits (it costs twice as much as the plan that covers in-network only). Aetna, which made $3 billion last year (and is being bought by CVS), I'm convinced, is the shittiest company in America. They are under investigation right now in California because a medical director admitted under oath that he never reviewed patients' medical records when deciding to deny benefits.

From the evidence, same thing happened to me. Supposed to have physical therapy visits for as long as it's deemed medically necessary; 25 visits a calendar year without preauthorization/precertification, and at that point Aetna may do a review to determine if continued coverage is necessary. Although they have a nice (for them) out: They can do a medical review anytime they want to regardless of number of visits.

My company is self-funded, meaning they are ultimately the insurer and responsible for paying the bills, and Aetna is the third-party administrator. I had an external problem so severe it caused an internal one and was sent to PT. After paying 4 claims last year, Aetna did a review and decided it wasn't medically necessary anymore. This is already too long: Aetna violated a bunch of federal insurance laws, subject to penalties (so my company as the insurer would have been responsible). But the medical director's clinical claim notes, when I finally got them six months after initially asking for them, had the wrong diagnosis and in one sentence noted that I had made progress with PT, and 2 sentences later said, Deny claims going forward because patient hasn't show progress with PT. This is healthcare in America.

My company's benefits department was ultimately no better than Aetna; they didn't know the terms of the plan agreement, or what they're required to do under the law. I don't like confrontation or getting ugly with people, but ultimately I did (I was aided by the U.S. Dept. of Labor saying that my company should pay the claims).

It dragged on for months, all the while I was still going to PT and my claims weren't being paid. Aetna flat-out lied about some things.

Oh dear, why did I go into all this? This thread touched a nerve is all. I do not give a shit: Call it whatever you want—Medicare for All, socialized medicine, whatever—but for-profit healthcare is a disaster, and I fucking hate Aetna (and the idiots in my company's benefits department who don't know their jobs) with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. And for the troll who started this thread, I wish [italic]only[/italic] hip replacement for which he has Aetna coverage.

To end on a positive note: Government agencies get a bad rap, but if you have insurance through a company's self-funded benefit plan, it's governed by the U.S. Department of Labor. In my case, it was a godsend: The caseworker was on my side, and without her, I probably wouldn't have ever gotten my claims paid.

[quote]But study after study shows, all of Europe lacks advanced medical treatments.

Oh, please. That's just ludicrous. And stupid. Give me a fucking break.

[quote]I would be surprised at someone choosing France over the USA, which is literally miles ahead of every other nation in any medical treatment that requires medicine at the forefront.

Ditto. You really have no idea what you're talking about.

The short response to these claims: Just how long do you think the wait is in the United States for this treatment for those who are uninsured or underinsured?

R46 Wouldn't be surprised if their waiting times are shorter than those in the UK. Honestly.

Infinity is longer than any waiting time in the UK, R47.

Yesterday I swear this thread said the teacher was going for a circumcision. Did I dream that?

R48 ???

I saw that too r49.

Yes, yesterday the teacher was coming to America for a circumcision:

[quote]He tweeted something like the National health service isn't any good for this. Explain Brits. I thought you guys love your NHS. Why go to America?

Someone has an agenda.

An old teacher of mine in the UK is going to Sierra Leone to catch AIDS. He tweeted something like the UK isn't any good for this. Explain Brits. I thought you guys loved AIDS. Why go to Sierra Leone?

[quote]R48 ???

If you don't have insurance, the odds are good that you will simply never get that hip replacement. Your waiting time is infinite because it will never happen. Infinity is longer than a few months.

Whenever someone talks about wait times in the UK or Canada vs. wait times in the U.S., always ask about the wait times in the U.S. for those who simply do not have insurance.

We have left the UK and no longer recommend using it.

[quote]I have known at least a dozen people in the US who have had knee and/or hip replacements. The minimum wait time here is about 6 months,often much more, and yes, most are told they must first undergo physical therapy to see if that fixes or improves the situation.

That wasn't my experience at all. From the time hip replacement was decided upon, a few weeks after my initial complaint, it took about a month to get on my doctors schedule. There was no bureaucratic tape to get through, just scheduling issues with doctor and facility. And you need some time to plan your life around a surgery like that anyhow.

The second hip a few years later was the same.

Of course, I have insurance through work. And I'm not a fatass.

France medicine is just as socialist as Britain's.

[quote][R6] the tweet wasn't done today smart ass at [R6]

And how would I know that, OP. It's not like you gave us a time frame for you post. The assumption is that your post is current unless noted otherwise.

It figures that an asshole like you would also be a troll.

Scram, you stupid fucking troll; you're at the wrong place. This shit may fly with the deplorable morons at redstate or breitbart, but DLers know better. U.S. insurance companies made literally billions of dollars last year from people in their claims departments automatically stamping "Deny" on claims of people who are diligently paying their premiums every month. This won't last.

It's probably to do with waiting times - apparently the waiting lists are long for a hip replacement. My mum recently broke her hip and had great surgery and care after - different because it was an emergency of course. If she'd have had to pay for it all it would have costs thousands, I can't believe people go into debt or bankrupt because of something like that in the US.

The number one cause of bankruptcy prior to the passage of the ACA. And with 25% of the population either having no coverage at all or having junk insurance that basically didn't cover shit.

The Brits will fight tooth and nail to keep the NHS. That's exactly how much they love and trust it.

Do you see anyone fighting to keep America's health care system as it is? Oh, just those making profits from it.

If I go the next state over or any other state, I have no insurance unless it’s an emergency. A broken leg is not an emergency as far as they are concerned. So bitching about flying what? A couple hours on a plane so I could get a hip replacement faster seems like bragging here in the US. I’m glad people have to wait for hip replacements while people with cancer are getting much faster service. Sounds like a good choice.

[quote]This is why India can do cheap medical procedures. They don't have any domestic research, they simply appropriate all American technologies. This is the same in Brazil and South Africa and all of Southeast Asia.

I would never go to a third-world country for surgery.

You would if that was the only way you could afford it, R64. 1.4 million Americans did this in 2016. I doubt that number has shrunk.

Everybody loves Canada and UK's system.An hates america'd prior authorization and wait times. Until they realize specialty care in UK and Canada, though much quicker....has alot of similar policies.I laughed when my PPO doctor said medicine's biggest problem is impatient patients and greedy insurance companies. Both,he said mockingly would burn down their own house just to be able to complain about it,fix it later on. "Its a freaking merry go-round...an everyone wants a damn ride".......he then told me to take off my clothes for my eye injury......an we both laughed hysterically........