Mostly for my UK friends

[howeird]

My cousin Shana in Brighton has MS. She has been lobbying Parliament for fairer treatment of all those who have disabilities which may appear to the observer as employable, but are not. Here's her latest, on The Guardian:
Click here

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

All I can do is wish your cousin well - even though I know very well what MS can do to a person - so consider that done. And if the opinion of one Coloradan counts for anything, I think that governments and the societies that empower them may be fairly judged by observing how they treat their weakest citizens. Both the US and Britain look like there is some room for improvement.

[howeird]

Thanks for the kind thoughts. What is most troubling about the UK is they supposedly have universal care.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Universal healthcare is only about 1/4th of the battle for survival. Gaining access to care is a separate issue. For example, where I worked, in the midst of a fairly decent state health system, new patients on one state aid program had to wait for months for a PCP appointment before they could do anything, at all, and their only other option was a very busy overcrowded urgent care clinic. There were no exceptions, not for diabetics, heart patients, nothing. The urgent care doctors saw it as their job to patch with bandaids and send people to their PCPs, and were very hesitant to write any long-term renewable prescriptions. To top it off, for some patients, their plan covered primary but not urgent, so every time they had to see an urgent care doctor to get a med renewal they'd get charged hundreds of dollars for a visit.

So healthcare is #1. Access is #2. #3 is all the things that have a major impact on health, are very expensive, and are not covered. Dental. Mental. Chiropractors - don't laugh, I was very cynical about chiropractors until I went to see one out of desperation and she not only kept me from needing the back surgery that would have likely been inevitable, but also in her secondary role as a nutritionist helped me to lose a lot of weight. Probably did as much for my health as my "real" doctor. #4 is the one that's thought of least, neglected most, and perhaps as important as all the others combined: disabiity insurance. When I worked I always had short term and long term disability insurance. Now that I'm retired, I don't have to worry so much about maintaining my income, but I would very likely lose everything if I had to spend any time in a nursing home. That's fine for people planning to die in the nursing home, but occasionally, one gets better, is ready to go home, and - look ma, no house. This happens to people who get in auto accidents and have serious injuries a lot - they spend 6 months in rehab, and come out to find themselves with half a million in bills and their house in foreclosure. #4 looks like what's troubling your cousin.

[howeird]

I know it is simplistic of me, but IMHO universal health care includes access to it.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Not if you're a (expletive deleted) politician. Unfortunately, we are in the habit of allowing politicians to tell us what to do and not the other way around.

[howeird]

Re-reading your reply. My cousin is in England, they don't have disability insurance because disabilities are (in theory) covered by the National Health. When there are no medical bills no one is going to lose a home from the high medical bills. What her trouble is is that the way the plan works, in order to qualify for disability, she needs to prove every year that the disability legitimately prevents her from working. As you know, with MS the bad days are unpredictable in severity and frequency.

On her good days, she could get hired instantly, but her bad days occur too often for her to hold a job. She's an actress and drama teacher by training. The National Health's death committees look at her on one of her good days and says "get a job, you bum".

There is some irony here. It is possible her blog will earn her enough money to disqualify her from disability payments.