I also hear that they calculate how much it cost to keep you alive, and then base it on that. The number I head was $22,000 for 6 months.

So if you have something that medication can keep you living for years on, but it cost more then 44,000 a year, you get to die.. yay.

Also, they ration things. One I heard was this eye drop medication that cost a ton. It will keep you from going blind, but being they have to have enough to go around on fixed cost, they just put it in one eye. This way twice as many people get the medication.

In the US, these types of things are unheard of, and down right despicable.

If you're talking about the UK, you hearing wrong.

I don't think I've ever heard of someone getting rejected because they've spent too much, nor have I heard about the eye drops thing. Hell - I was eye drops for a while for my glasses (dunno why).... and I sure as hell had it in both my eyes.

And that was under a Tory Government....

Both of you guys actually need to get out an go to a UK hospital (seriously, help out our tourism ), you guys have many false conceptions about waiting times, quality of care, etc. in "socialised" health care systems.

Well, for some reason the United Kingdom pays three times less for healthcare than the United States.  Their government has more control over healthcare, which is a major factor in it.

I pesronally know doctors, and many of them are oppsoed to the bill because they fear that it will cause specialists will make less money.  This is a good thing because there is a shortage in primary care doctors and specialists make too much money as is.

If you're interested: http://www.jobs.nhs.uk/

Here, you can check out the wages of many of the jobs you can do within the NHS. Bearing in mind that the average wage in the UK is £22,000.

A lot of those jobs seem fairly cooshty to me.

Another plus of the NHS is that it's great for employment, the NHS is the third largest employer in the world (largest in Europe), after the Chinese Army and the Indian Railway. Employing around 1.3 million people.

I'vre read both.  From UK newsources.

Then something happened to one of the guys with a glass eye.

Additionally it is well documented that local NHS offices often ration drugs and there are many drugs not approved simply for cost reasons.  People of different demograhics DO get treated differently.

Shitty thing to pay all your life to NHS and not get treatment because you didn't get cancer until you were older.

It's all under "guidence"

there are times when the NHS fails people, but they are pretty rare, by and large, most people here have no problems when they need healthcare, it would be stupid of anyone to say that thoose rare failures are anything more than rare, just as it would be silly for anyone to say that there are never failures, you will get failures with any system though, public or private, theres still gonna be times when systems fail people.

Here is the problem.

They intentional fail people.  On purpose.  People who have paid their tax dollars specifically for this.  And it's not that rare.

It's cost cutting measures... they constantly drag their feet to avoid new expensive medicine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5224537/Patients-risk-going-blind-as-NHS-refuses-treatment.html

Plenty of drugs are just straight banned from older folk.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-528472/Retired-nurse-told-You-blind-NHS-treatment.html

Two problems... with the same drugs...

Yeah, you've read both, we've had this before. You brought up about 20 articles, could probably find a couple hundred more.

But thousands and thousands of people benefit from the system each and every day. As SciFiBoy said, there isn't a system that won't fail people.

If what you read was more the norm, then you wouldn't be reading it at all, particularly from UK news sources, as it wouldn't be news.

well, we need to review that system clearly, im in favour of more investment in things like that, so i would say, yes the NHS should get thoose drugs, the debate should be, how do we pay for that, if there are parts of the NHS that have funding they dont need so much of, we can simply re-alocate thoose funds, if the NHS needs more cash, then we need to see where we can cut money to do that.

Agism in NHS isn't the norm?

Survival for those over 70 are the lowest in western Europe and The United states.  

http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/110200/NHS-bias-against-elderly-people-is-quite-outrageous

Which is the problem.  National healthcare either has to blindly provide and go bankrupt or discriminate.