The TT

<snip info>

Ta for that.

Hmm. On the example of an alcoholic, I'm really not sure.

<thinks>

OK, I think they should have an equal slot.

When I broke my collarbone racing, I told the medic that I
specifically wanted to be racing at the next meeting in 7 weeks, and
he was completely supportive. No suggestion that I didn't 'deserve'
treatment. Which is as it should be - healthcare is there to support
people leading *their* lives - if that involves drinking oneself to a
stupor or crashing motorbikes, so be it.

The example that made the news last year was overweight people and hip
replacement ops. I can believe such ops have poorer outcomes for
overweight people, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask them to lose
weight first. But, in the light of what I've written above, it does
have the whiff of slippery slope about it.

 

One of the advantages of incurance-driven healthcare is that these
issues are irrelevant. In some areas, of course, like the US, it's
done by another means, so you risk being priced out of the market or
refused cover if you're 'high-risk', but this isn't inherent to the
concept, just a poor implementation.

In Switzerland, they seem to get it right - health insurance is
mandatory for everyone (although state-funded for the unemployed) and
as such is relatively well regulated, so you can't be refused cover
for pre-existing illnesses, for example. Accident insurance is
completely separate, and has to be provided by the employer.

The hospitals themselves seem to be state-sponsored in some way I
can't quite fathom, in that there's always a Kantonspital, i.e. the
normal main hospital for a region, and often separate University
Hospitals. Here in Basel they're physically the same place, but it
seems that some services are provided by one, some by the other.
Basically it means that they're not in competition, nor operating in a
free economic market such as they do in the US.

Of course, I can only go by our own experiences, but so far every
aspect of healthcare is vastly superior to that we were used to in the
UK, even when we were private and/or insurance-funded patients.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3 (slightly broken, currently missing)
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

That would be telling.

 

Why don't you **** off to alt.fucking.xenophobic.neanderthal.****, where
your sort are positively welcomed?
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a

Teach a man to fish and he and his pikey mates will have the
river cleaned out in a day.

 

I did a short magazine bio on a bike racer. I asked why he got into
racing; he said that his friends told him to do so as they were tired
of visiting him in hospital from his road accidents.
In the ten years since he began racing, he'd never been in another
accident - road or track.

If someone could revive Joey D and offer him the chance to be filling
ale glasses in his pub for fifty years, safely or relive that life he
had, which do you think he'd choose?