If the NHS was private "my little girl would be dead now", Dad tells James O'Brien
4 December 2019, 13:47 | Updated: 4 December 2019, 13:59
This dad called in and told James O'Brien that if the NHS had been private "my little girl would be dead now" and "it would be a nightmare" if the health service went down this route.
The caller Jason said that for brief procedures a private hospital would be good, but "anything serious - cancer, people with transplants, I've looked at the private side of things, the treatment's no better and the cost is astronomical.
"I 100% believe if it had been private my little girl would be dead now. There wouldn't have been a healthcare insurance that would've covered it."
Jason told James his daughter has cancer but is coming towards the end of her treatment.
James delicately said that there is a path down which our society could go where one day a mentality could be "if her parents can't afford to pay for cancer treatment, why should she get it?"
He said it could be possible in a fictional future for people to say "why should my taxes go on that child's cancer treatment when her own parents can't afford it?"
This is what happened when people in the U.K. were asked how much health care costs in the U.S.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 3, 2019
Remember that our outrageous for-profit system is not the norm in other countries.
We can and we must do better.
We need Medicare for All now.pic.twitter.com/AYGdRf8Lia
Jason agreed, "I don't doubt it, it probably will go down that route like all the other public things we used to have."
James asked him who he trusted with people insisting both that the NHS is up for sale and that it never could be.
"I don't think it'd go down the route of being sold to America," said Jason, "but I definitely think it will at some point go down the route of being privatised. It is one of the few things we have left."
He said that the treatment in a private hospital was no better and in fact it'd be "a nightmare."
James then quoted Bernie Sanders, who retweeted a JOE interview about UK citizens' responding in disbelief at the price of US healthcare.
