Kay Elúvian
Want to know why the #NHS rules and why Brits love it and will defend it to the death?
I take:
Sertraline ($76 USD per month)
Atarvostatin ($148 /m)
Propranolol ($42 /m)
Estragel ($158 /m)
Decapeptyl (~$100 /m)
$524 every month.
I pay £110 per year / ~$12 per month.
Also I was out of sertraline so the pharmacist said "come in, I'll give you some".
And while I was at the pharmacy, I got a free flu shot (cos I'm a fat squidge).
No wallet biopsy. No insurance.
TREASURE THE NHS.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@kayeluvian the same NHS that gives trans people arbitrary, absurdly long wait times (up to five years) for lifesaving gender affirming care even while their offices are empty and their doctors idle, in an attempt to discourage them which can often lead to suicide during the wait?
AnCuRuadh ΔΘ :verified_trans:
@anarchopunk_girl This. In America you can get your HRT as long as you can raise the money. That's still shit, but I'll take running a GoFundMe over the NHS any day... :blobfoxangry:
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@kayeluvian we really need to think past "socialized" and state socialist models of providing medical care (and other things) and figure out a decentralized means of providing care for everyone that relies on mutual aid, distributed networks, and voluntary, overlapping, multifarious associations. Like the old lodge system. But of course for that to work we need to tear down a lot of the existing medical system — the rules in the US and UK that make it so that you can't get a license as a doctor if you work on retainer for workers, the intellectual property laws, the laws that serve regulatory capture and artificial monopoly through restriction of supply. And that's a lot harder than just appealing to the state, as your God, to save you.
AnCuRuadh ΔΘ :verified_trans:
@admin Did you miss the part where waitlists are in multiple decades? Or the part where the government doesn't need to make laws banning care for trans kids because they run all the clinics so they can just *fucking shut down the only childrens gender clinic in the entire country?*
SlightlyCyberpunk
@AnCuRuadh @anarchopunk_girl @kayeluvian Dafuq? In America I have trouble getting any treatment at all regardless of how much I pay! Can't even get a simple flu test without a NINE MONTH WAIT (I have literally been told that by doctors as though that makes ANY sense at all); I go to appointments and can't get even five minutes with the doctor, can't get anything other than hastily prescribed pills that typically don't even work and pay hundreds of dollars even with decent insurance going back over and over again to try to find something that will because they'd rather throw twenty prescriptions at you than spend five minutes getting the information required to make sure they're treating the right thing...shit half the time the doctor tells you while they're writing out the prescription that they don't think it will help but they want you to take it anyway (probably so they get a cut next time the drug reps come around)...
I mean yeah I guess if you just want pills you can get pills, just be careful because they most likely won't be the right pills and will often make the situation worse...last time I *trusted* a doctor here I went from a sore throat to coughing up blood because of the crazy cocktail of drugs they blindly threw at me in the hopes that one of them might do something...
You ain't a patient in the US, you're a petri dish. And you'll pay obscene amounts to be that.
AnCuRuadh ΔΘ :verified_trans:
@admin Did you miss the part where no sane trans person in any country actually trusts a doctor to be more than a prescription printing machine and the actual issue is the NHS *fucking refusing to provide any care at all?*
Why do I have a feeling this is yet another cissie who knows fuck all about the trans experience but just *has* to stick their oar in anyway because *of course* the world revolves around them?
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@AnCuRuadh @admin @kayeluvian that's what usually happens when you talk about centralized medicine — because like I said, centralized medicine is great if you're part of the in-group that everybody loves and agrees should have basic human rights, but the entire point I've been making is that for marginalized people — whose doctors are ill-informed anyway and whose rights are up for debate — centralized medicine is a nightmare horror show.
Also, SlightlyCyberpunk, this is an uttey and completely laughable false dichotomy that you're setting up, where the answer must be either state socialized-centralized medicine or the horrible medical industrial complex held up by the state for the profits of capital that America has, when those simply AREN'T the only two options. By shitting on centralized state healthcare I am not in any way endorsing the way America does it either.
AnCuRuadh ΔΘ :verified_trans:
@admin Here's a fact for you to read and maybe learn something from: It is easier to get gender affirming care in the USA than in the UK.
And no, I don't care about what you think of that fact.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@kayeluvian @AnCuRuadh @admin you're saying that the problem isn't with the system, it's with the people in charge, and the system will be good once we have the right people in charge. My problem is with creating a system where we all have to hang on to the hope that the right people get in charge and that they believe the right things and care about the right things in the first place, instead of creating a system that is resilient and designed to protect from and prevent abuse of it in the first place. I'd rather deal with the root cause of a problem then just try to vote in the right people. I'd rather create a system where we don't have to worry about who is in charge and what they believe because there's no central point of failure for there to be people in charge of that can hurt us. I really don't think creating a massive "control all healthcare in this country" button is a good idea, because I don't think once you've centralized power in one place that you can always guarantee that that power will be controlled by people with your best interests at heart. I think it's incredibly short-sighted and naive and idiotic to think that the problem with a system that is causing harm is that the right people just aren't in charge right now and we just need to switch them out.
It's like insisting that the problem isn't with monarchy, the problem is that we don't have the right monarch in place, and with a good, kind, even-handed monarch things would be fine. Maybe we shouldn't have to rely on the right person being in place and instead should be able to take things into our own hands and look out for ourselves and each other and our communities.
Kay Elúvian
@AnCuRuadh @admin @anarchopunk_girl@kolektiva.social 100% agree but that's not an argument against the concept of a national health service. The fact ours has institutional transphobia is because that needs fixing, just like its chronic underfunding (see waiting lists) and that every cabinet minister likes dicking with the rules (because the NHS is so complicated its infinitely configurable for a jerk trying to put their stamp on it).
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian the point is that at least you can get *something*, even if it isn't great care, under the American system, and I think that's *still* better than the NHS for people who have been outright denied medical care. But yeah, sorry, in the heat of the moment I forgot what comment you were replying to lol. I'm very fried today
SlightlyCyberpunk
@anarchopunk_girl @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian wait did somebody delete a post here or something? Because I SWEAR the post I replied to specifically said something along the lines of at least you can get care in the US system as long as you are able to pay for. And my point was merely that even if you can pay for it, you'll get *something* but it might not really qualify as healthcare. Similar conclusion to yours -- both systems suck. Just trying to dispel this myth that people who can afford it do get good care here. I suppose billionaires might, but nobody else does.
(On an unrelated note. Thanks to whoever reported me to myself and called me a "stupid cissie shit", glad you think that's something which deserves a ban, but good luck getting me banned from my own server xD)
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
Also,
> Thanks to whoever reported me to myself and called me a "stupid cissie shit"
I mean you were being a bit of an insufferable cis person there, sticking your oar into a discussion where marginalized people were talking about how a certain medical system is better for them to complain about how horrible and terrible that medical system is and talk over and argue back against things that you don't have experience with
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian fair enough, but I think this one example of the NHS being worse gets at fundamental problems with centralized medicine though.
SlightlyCyberpunk
@anarchopunk_girl @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian No worries. But yeah choosing between being able to pay absurd prices for some semblance of gender affirming care or actually being able to get cancer treatment for example ain't a good choice on either side. When you decide to go to America for easier access to hormones and end up with a gunshot wound, how's the heathcare experience gonna be for THAT? Or when you end up in the hospital far more often because our food is fucking toxic. Or when you discover mental health care basically doesn't exist in huge parts of the country...
Good to point out the flaws in both systems, but doesn't seem fair or reasonable to say one is better based only on one specific flaw in the other. Fight for change in the NHS, absolutely...but I can't accept anyone saying the US system on the whole is better because of that lol
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian yeah, again, the American system is more decentralized than the NHS but it is hardly decentralized or distributed enough. It's still a horror show and in many respects an even greater horror show.
One thing I ponder a lot tho is the idea that it would be a good thing for a system to operate purely on the basis of viewing its operation as an end in itself (in this case having a medical system that provides medical care because it believes that people deserve medical care). I think that has to be an important and crucial part of any system in order to prevent problematic incentive structures — so in my ideal World any association of workers that provides any service would be oriented towards providing that service at least mostly as an end in itself and composed of people that believe in that mission — but I also think that there's a degree to which Adam Smith is right, and it's actually good not to have to depend on the good will of people, and be able to depend on their self-interest instead. That's why I'm not necessarily in favor of the complete abolition of money (I'd prefer a system of mutual credit and credit clearing that basically operates as a slightly more abstracted and codified gift economy under the hood).
SlightlyCyberpunk
@anarchopunk_girl @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian Eh, the US system is heavily centralized in its own way. Shit we have individual insurance companies that have more clients than the entire population of England. And all these massive companies tend to move in unison, because they're driven by the same goal -- maximizing profits. If this care is easier to get, it only means it's more profitable. They're not doing it because they think it's important or even because they think people want it -- most Americans have no choice in who their provider is or what services are covered anyway (side note: the whole thing of not being able to quit your job or you'll lose your healthcare really sucks too). Which I guess is about the same as the NHS, except at least your vote presumably influences the NHS a bit?
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@asbestos @admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian yes, but they're not necessarily the only option. They don't have *all the power.*
asbestos
@admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian
You have lots of gatekeepers here in the US same with paternalism, bureaucracy, all that.
asbestos
@admin @AnCuRuadh @kayeluvian
Fair enough. There is certainly much to be critical of in a national system. As you said "single point of failure" Here you can have some choice. The problem is that you have only as much choice as you can afford. This leaves millions with only the bare minimum of care. For people working a $20/hour job that's an academic point.
Also where I am you have to go to the city to avoid going to a hospital run by religious zelots.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
I just have one last thing I really wanna say tbh bc I think this discussion has been good, but it's getting a bit beaten to death
> The problem is that you have only as much choice as you can afford. This leaves millions with only the bare minimum of care. For people working a $20/hour job that's an academic point.
Right, but at least there is the *possibility* of that care if you're able to raise enough money for it, versus it simply being flatly impossible for basically anyone to get that care without being on a multi-year-long waitlist.
It's worse for most people most of the time, but for some people it's better, and I think we do need to think about the fact that centralized healthcare is flawed and doesn't work for everyone, so we don't end up fucking over some people in order to help the majority, and so we can find something much better than either option.
My point going into this was not to say that the American healthcare system is better overall than a centralized healthcare system, but to point out that it is far worse for trans people and in general that that is indicative of the fact that it has important flaws, and so uncritically praising centralized healthcare systems and acting like they are the stopping point is not a good idea.
Plus, I see people doing it a lot and so I wanted to push back on that. It has flaws that go deeper than the few things it happens to contingently be bad at right now.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.