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Polar Vision and Socialized Healthcare

March 11, 2010 by peter  
Filed under Destinations

2 Comments

I’m sitting here in New Zealand feeling frustrated after reading Kinsey Gidick’s article True Tales about Healthcare Abroad. Nothing against Gidick, the article makes for an interesting read.

While the article does a great job of proving a point regarding the exorbitant cost of healthcare in the USA and the Medical Tourism alternatives available, Gidick, along with the vast majority of US media, polarizes the concept of socialized healthcare.

I’m referring to the section entitled “United Kingdom or Magic Kingdom”:

Dr. Evans disagrees. “I had a good friend of mine who lived on the west coast of England who was in his 80s and suffered from terrible chronic neuropathic pain,” he says. “After months of waiting, he was at last able to see a neurosurgeon who confirmed that he needed surgery to correct his problem. They put him down on the books for surgery 11 months out. Granted the surgery and all his care was free, but had he been in this country I could have picked up the phone and had him in a surgical suite in a week.”

Why is it that, regardless of whether they are ‘for’ or ‘against’ socialized healthcare, the US media insist on packaging a nations healthcare up in a nice tidy box that either has ‘socialized’ or ‘not socialized’ (or more correctly ‘American system’ or ‘Canadian system’) written on the front. The reality is that it is not this black and white…

Read the whole article: The Medical Traveller

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Comments

2 Responses to “Polar Vision and Socialized Healthcare”
  1. Kinsey says:
    March 11, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    Hi Peter,

    Thank you for the critique. You’re right it is hard to cover this topic without putting other countries medical options into tidy boxes and given my word count it was tough to avoid. I tried to give an unbiased example of the options available overseas and still include quotes from two health care professionals as well. May I ask how you found my article?

    Thanks,
    Kinsey Gidick

  2. peter says:
    March 12, 2010 at 6:02 am

    Hi Kinsey,

    Thanks for an interesting article!

    The article was picked up from an RSS feed from The medical traveller and not authored by me. You can pick up the entire article here:
    http://www.themedicaltraveller.com/medical-tourism/polar-vision-and-socialized-healthcare/

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