OT: Back

It depends on how quickly you need/can get treatment. When I had my nerve injury, the waiting time via the NHS was six months to see a Neurologist or four weeks via BUPA. I was glad I was with the latter at that time.

I'm well aware that their healthcare is pretty shit, it's a chance we'd have to take. I wouldn't live there permanently anyway, a couple of years max. IME Healthcare in most countries apart from UK seems to be pretty flaky/insurance based - certainley is in Greece and every South American country I've been too :-)

Yes, that was the situation with my wife's eyes. Got seen next day on BUPA, we would have had to wait a 3 months on the NHS. As someone else was paying for my BUPA at the time, it seemed silly not to get it done. Of course, near the end of the treatment, I got made redundant so had to shell out the last couple of months myself to cover it. It's now cancelled..

Heheh, UKRCM had this argument about a year ago IIRC and I seem to remember that you were on the other side of the fence. So was Mike P, but it looks like he's still there. (c:

I've not seen Sicko, but I have expat relatives who live in the states who earn a decent enough living and pay for spiffy medical cover. I'm fairly sure they've been keeping NI contributions up to date over here as a contingency however.

I'm also pretty sure everyone on this group personally knows at least 1 person who has had NHS treatment to a value that would have bankrupted them and their families several times over if their medical cover had fallen short in foreign parts such as the United States.

Heh, that was last April :-)

My dad lives in Greece, he keeps up his NI contributions over here and has never had problems getting treatment on the odd occasion he's needed it in the UK in the last 20 years. Of course, that's no good for emergency treatment

Indeed..

Mike P

You're missing out on an entire continent - there's a lot of great stuff, some of which is very sparsely populated.

I'd not want to live there either, but as a holiday destination it has a huge amount to offer.

Steve H is right, it's a country designed for the neutron bomb. If the Americans culd be exterminated leaving the scenery intact it would be a net benefit to mankind. As to spending holidays there, no. Anyone who agrees to have the Yanks dig into their private life and to take their fingerprints and photograph to be stored in perpetuity in order to spend a fortnight in the shithole that is Florida is, quite simply, a moron.

That was about NI contributions and pension and medical care provision.

I'm only going by what I remember, but I'm sure you said you were all for ditching the UK cos the US healthcare system was probably fine enough for you and you would hardly have to pay any tax compared to the UK.

I'm not trying to say people aren't allowed to change their opinions.

Maybe you'd still move there in a shot, I dunno.

It's a bit of a generalisation but I used to be quite quick to slag off the UK's benefits system and the NHS.

I still don't like to see either system abused by the people it's meant to help, and I know that reciprocally, they can also abuse the people they are supposed to be helping.

Anyway, I actually get pretty pissed off when people who don't know any better tell me how crap the UK's NHS is cos that's not my experience of it.

Going by what little I know of the system in the USA, unless some lifestyle tangibly better than what I've got takes me there, I'll not be upping my sticks.

Amen. (c:

Ah yes, now I remember...

Views have been changed on the medical system. Canada is now my new preference, it being the USA without the bad bits.

I wouldn't do it for Florida, but touring the desert round Utah, Colorado, Arizona was pretty good.

Why on Earth woudl one want to leave the cradle of the englightenment and indeed of the dominant civilisation on the face of the planet to go look at f*ck-all and to get bagged and tagged in the process?

If you want to see a big hole in the ground, go to Provence. At least you'll get decent food and wine while you're at it. There is not, in my experience, any such thing as good food in the USA. It's all "Frankie and Benny" style crap.

And I'll go to the USA for a holiday after I've finished seeing Europe. I reckon I'll be about 1500 years old by then.

America is an example of what happens when you let chavs run a country. Of course the chavs love it, hence the popularity of Florida (a swamp) as a location for chav weddings.

Any misdemeanour in your past, no matter how trivial, and you have to personally attend their embassy these days for a grilling before they'll consider granting you a visa.

You haven't looked, then.

That's only the case for people who can't read the small print on the back of the now deceased I94W and then look up the classifications on Wikipedia.

They've even decided that a speeding fine meriting more than a fixed penalty is sufficient reason to send someone back to the UK without clearing immigration.

And you're wrong. I suspect you don't have a clue about good food. The rubbish served in America starts out poor at the farm. After that it's simply downhill. It's crap, but they give you big portions.

Explain further.

I had to look into getting some visas for a holiday to the States a while back, and it appeared at that time unless you were as clean as the driven snow, you had to visit the US Embassy in person for an interview of sorts before they'd consider granting you a visa.

Has it changed again of late?