No, I don't think it is the norm. In fact, there's a British joke/stereotype that goes around because old people flood the NHS over the smallest of things.

Seriously, when you go to the General Practitioners, or to the Hospitals, the odds are, old people are going to be the majority, I don't see those people getting rejected treatment.

And I'm not even going to bother reading the Express as everything in it is just a load of right wing fabrication. Hell, if you check the wiki page, it's got it stated that it's aligned with the fucking BNP, for christ sake.

It's a load of bollocks.

Alas, you'll find more articles, but it's never the norm, merely exceptions. I did find this article from the BBC written in 2000 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/715071.stm - where it's "rife", but the NHS has come on leaps and bounds since then, and by "rife" they meant 40 people.

So... how can you explain away that people over the age of 70 have the lowest survival rate?

lol, the only time i hear refrences to the express is when people make jokes about them still linking stuff to diana.

but yeah, the media here is 90% right wing bs, i dont trust much of what the news here says.

like i said before, kasz216, if we find that something IS a problem, then yes, we should see how to tackle it.

I can't... shit weather?

Although I would argue that it's not necessarily the health care system that's at fault for old people dieing. Every year thousands of old people die because they get their gas/electricity turned off and there's nothing that can be done about it.

Or they die from lack of sanitation, you often hear stories of police breaking into old people's homes to find the person dead with piles and piles of rubbish, etc.

There are huge problems with how the aged are treated in this country, but I don't think those problems are coming from the NHS, more with how they're treated by general society - ignored, basically.

I can link other sources. For example...

http://www.nursingtimes.net/whats-new-in-nursing/specialists/older-people/older-stroke-patients-suffer-nhs-ageism-says-study/5000558.article

This is after they "fixed it" in 2000.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jan/26/nhs-ageism-geriatricians

Will it "really" be fixed this time.  I doubt it... since likely "Will probably die in the next 10 years" doesn't count as discrimination.

I didn't say they fixed it, I said the NHS has come on leaps and bounds since 2000 - assuming that old age care would have improved along with the rest of the NHS.

Well... it hasn't?

I was looking for the percentage of people in the UK who have private insurance, and came across this financial article. 

http://www.financialadvice.co.uk/news/4/insurance/11138/Have-you-considered-taking-out-private-health-insurance.html

The purpose of the article is to just talk about if it's sound financial advice to by private health insurance, but this line is the one that made me post it:

"While there are significant benefits from private health care insurance there are obvious costs associated which need to be considered."

Those "significant benefits" are the ones we here in the US all get, if we have insurance. 

And that's where we differ in philosophy. In the US, everyone with health insurance gets far better care then people in the UK. Some people (uninsured) might get worse.

But that's there fault. A very large percentage of people without insurance chose not to get it. Every able person in the US had the avenue to put there lives in a position to have insurance, and chose not to.

I would like to see a graph of the number of people who are negatively impacted by the UK vs US system, and see how much they differ.

Let's just say it;s 10% for both. The 10% effected in the US are there because they as people didn't do enough in life to put themselves in a position to afford it.

The 10% in the UK are people who did everything right, but just fall into a bad statistical category.

I will take the US system any day. Give me the ability to earn better healthcare, and then force me to earn it.

My life, in every way, is better then if I lived in the UK, only difference is I had to earn it. In the UK, a lot of it is given to you (why you don't have the option to earn what I have).

Apparently not. No need for the question mark.

I'm not going to argue with you, I just want to address that last sentence which I would disagree with. I come from quite a wealthy area in the UK, and I know of a lot of people who have earned a hell of a lot, I know of 3 millionaires, and quite a few people who are considered to be really wealthy. They managed to succeed just fine in this country under our current system, and some of them even came from backgrounds where they lived on welfare.

Hell, my own family is testament, both of my parents came from relatively poor backgrounds, living on welfare, that kind of thing. I've just said bye to my dad, as he's flying to Hong Kong to meet some of his business partners and check up on some of his factories in China.

We used to have private health, actually. But it didn't offer any real benefits to us, so my dad canceled the policy and we went back to NHS treatment. However, I'm also quite lucky in the sense that all of the hospitals, doctors and clinics in my area are the highest ranking in the country.