Do you know who I am?

[juansolo]

Being stranded in an Ambulance that's run out of gas makes me think that he actually needed a doctor, and if he waited even a portion of the day after having to find an alternative route... That's a pretty bad day. Anyone should be allowed some grace after that.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that wasn't complete fabrication on the wife's part. That sort of shit just doesn't happen. Made more plausible by the hours and hours he was waiting which was actually something like 1:40 between initial tweet and rant. As I said above though, if he called an ambulance for a fever and because he arms hurt, whilst totally able to tweet and indeed perform a gig was taking the piss. Again, if the ambulance existed at all and wasn't just embellishment on the wife's part (wasn't mentioned at all in his original rant, just that he'd had to wait and had a gig to go to).

Maybe he expected them to wave a magic wand over him pre-gig and make it all better?

But the fact that he expected to be able to play the gig means he himself didn't think he was on deaths door now did he. I wonder if he was just after some pain killers...? Well there are Pharmacy's for those and generally speaking you don't have to wait.

It sounds like he didn't need to be in A&E and he was prioritised low in the queue because he was not indeed an accident or emergency. Rather he was ill, like many other people. Other people who have jobs and commitments. Other people who also had to wait while more serious injuries and conditions were dealt with first.

He was venting his spleen. Sure. But it was in a dickish manner. He obviously stands by that dickish manner in that he hasn't appologised for being a dick. The Dr on there explained to him how the system worked, and a simple 'I'm sorry, I'm a stranger in these lands, I didn't understand'. Would have sufficed. To be honest I found it nice to see the system working in a completely unbiased and rational manner, as it should.

[Rockhorst]

+1 on Juan

If I recall the sickest days in my 32 years on earth...the last thing I would be thinking about is playing a gig, because it would be physically near impossible. Nothing life-threatening thankfully, but a really high fever (I hit 41 centigrade once, you become pretty delirious by that point) or serious food poisoning can knock you off your feet for days. He must be lucky, never to have felt that sick before.

[alanp]

I've taken my brother into A&E two times.

First time, a side of beef landed square on him, and his back screamed fucking murder every time so much as the cat blinked at him. Took him in (the spine is nothing to fuck around with), took fucking four hours, turned out kinda okay. I didn't mind losing four hours playing driver. Firstly, my brother's health takes priority for me. Secondly, other people whose lives may be in danger take priority over a non-permanent pain, and I trust the professionals to be able to make the decision.

Second time, he fell in the bath and screamed fucking murder. My sister refused to go in (it was the bath), I took him in again.

Broken jaw. Wound up being a drive to another town (a mate did that part, I did the three hour total late night fucking drive into the hospital). Did I mind? Again, it's my brother. I didn't know if it was a skull fracture or if he bruised his tongue. Did I mind the three hour wait? It was bloody ten PM, doctors have lives too (they had to call the X-ray dude back in after hours), fair enough.

NZ is probably fairly close to Britain's NHS. (If you want it to happen fast and you're not going to die from it, go private.) It's not perfect, but it's better than other countries, where if you can't pay them then fuck off and die.

[Guitarmageddon]

Huge fan of free public health care, unfortunately it's strained and stretched in my country (Oz). IMHO  because there is a parallel private system that allows the wealthy to pay their way out of having to improve the lot of everyone else.  I'd bet public would get a lot more funding if everyone was using it.
Ironically, thanks to the principles of free enterprise, you'll likely get better care, better conditions and much better staff to patient ratios in the public system here too.
Clearly the dude's a douche, and doesn't grasp the triage concept. Sad really, and I'm guessing he's American. It both astounds and saddens me as to how hostile even the more moderate US citizens I know are to the concept of public health care. At best, they feel a guilt for contemplating about it. Denying it seems to be indoctrinated.
I guess it's fuzzy history, I believe the idea of judging a civilisation by how well it cares for it's poor and weak goes back to the Ancient Greeks- and they pretty much invented both democracy and modern medicine. Surely everyone deserves equal access to health care for a society to be deemed civilised?

[raulduke]

NZ is probably fairly close to Britain's NHS. (If you want it to happen fast and you're not going to die from it, go private.) It's not perfect, but it's better than other countries, where if you can't pay them then fuck off and die.

And there is the crux of it. If you want priority service Mike Portnoy then go to a private hospital. Maybe put some of that money from your meet and greet sessions towards the fee eh?

Otherwise... stop your fucking moaning and wait in line with everyone else. If your situation is critical you will get seen. If it's not then you will have to wait, along with all of us 'normal' folk.

Slagging off the NHS as a self-entitled foreign rockstar over on these shores is a sure fire way of pissing most of us off. I would hazard a guess that it is one of the few things in this country that we are all collectively proud and protective of.

It's whole foundation is based upon free healthcare for all residents of the UK not depending on race, wealth, or social status.

So yeah he pretty much hit the jackpot of douche-ness with that one. Bingo! Top marks!

[juansolo]

Bang on.

My dad was bent over in utter agony, unable to move. An ambulance was called, I got in touch with my brother. Everyone arrived, they got him into the ambulance and me and my brother followed (mum in the ambulance). We could barely keep up...

Arrive at hospital, no triage, no nothing, straight through. Diagnosed with acute pancreatitis and dealt with. What that causes is all the organs in your body to inflame and apply pressure to the diaphragm, essentially making breathing difficult. He was put into intensive care on a respirator while the inflammation died down. We were told his chances of survival were 50/50. Over the next week we were called in twice when he took a turn for the worse. As he recovered he was moved out of ICU, he was finally given a morphine epidural for which he offered to marry the male nurse who gave it to him. Seeing your father tripping away merrily is a weird experience...

Anyhow. I owe my dad still being around to Pinderfields A&E. Simple as that. The system has a lot wrong with it, but it works and the people in it are fucking heroes as far as I'm concerned. When some entitled twat comes along and gives them shit because he had a fever and his arms hurt, but he's got a gig to go to, so they should see him now, it annoys me. When one of the Dr's from that unit explains how it works to him and he ignores his very polite and almost apologetic post, it annoys me more. When his wife bangs on about all the things that went wrong and how shit he was treated when it's very likely all fabrication, I start to get properly angry.

We do a lot wrong in the UK. But the NHS is something we're rightly proud of. It's not perfect, but it's genuinely a good thing. I've worked in it, I've seen the sort of legislative shit they have to put up with. Yet they soldier on being paid feck all money in the scheme of things doing what I consider to be one of the most righteous professions on the planet, simply because they care.

So I take it a little personally when some 'rock star' gives it some shit.

That's my rant over

[cooder]

Bang on.

My dad was bent over in utter agony, unable to move. An ambulance was called, I got in touch with my brother. Everyone arrived, they got him into the ambulance and me and my brother followed (mum in the ambulance). We could barely keep up...

Arrive at hospital, no triage, no nothing, straight through. Diagnosed with acute pancreatitis and dealt with. What that causes is all the organs in your body to inflame and apply pressure to the diaphragm, essentially making breathing difficult. He was put into intensive care on a respirator while the inflammation died down. We were told his chances of survival were 50/50. Over the next week we were called in twice when he took a turn for the worse. As he recovered he was moved out of ICU, he was finally given a morphine epidural for which he offered to marry the male nurse who gave it to him. Seeing your father tripping away merrily is a weird experience...

Anyhow. I owe my dad still being around to Pinderfields A&E. Simple as that. The system has a lot wrong with it, but it works and the people in it are fucking heroes as far as I'm concerned. When some entitled twat comes along and gives them shit because he had a fever and his arms hurt, but he's got a gig to go to, so they should see him now, it annoys me. When one of the Dr's from that unit explains how it works to him and he ignores his very polite and almost apologetic post, it annoys me more. When his wife bangs on about all the things that went wrong and how shit he was treated when it's very likely all fabrication, I start to get properly angry.

We do a lot wrong in the UK. But the NHS is something we're rightly proud of. It's not perfect, but it's genuinely a good thing. I've worked in it, I've seen the sort of legislative shit they have to put up with. Yet they soldier on being paid feck all money in the scheme of things doing what I consider to be one of the most righteous professions on the planet, simply because they care.

So I take it a little personally when some 'rock star' gives it some shit.

That's my rant over

That really sums it up perfectly.
My partner works in the Nelson hospital lab, doing blood tests and all that stufff that's necessary for operations and A+E etc, she works nightshifts and all the lot.
Tough stuff making the right decisions behind the scenes at 3 am in the morning to keep A+E going where lives depend on it.
I couldn't do it. She's amazing too.

[billstein]

Bang on.

My dad was bent over in utter agony, unable to move. An ambulance was called, I got in touch with my brother. Everyone arrived, they got him into the ambulance and me and my brother followed (mum in the ambulance). We could barely keep up...

Arrive at hospital, no triage, no nothing, straight through. Diagnosed with acute pancreatitis and dealt with. What that causes is all the organs in your body to inflame and apply pressure to the diaphragm, essentially making breathing difficult. He was put into intensive care on a respirator while the inflammation died down. We were told his chances of survival were 50/50. Over the next week we were called in twice when he took a turn for the worse. As he recovered he was moved out of ICU, he was finally given a morphine epidural for which he offered to marry the male nurse who gave it to him. Seeing your father tripping away merrily is a weird experience...

Anyhow. I owe my dad still being around to Pinderfields A&E. Simple as that. The system has a lot wrong with it, but it works and the people in it are fucking heroes as far as I'm concerned. When some entitled twat comes along and gives them shit because he had a fever and his arms hurt, but he's got a gig to go to, so they should see him now, it annoys me. When one of the Dr's from that unit explains how it works to him and he ignores his very polite and almost apologetic post, it annoys me more. When his wife bangs on about all the things that went wrong and how shit he was treated when it's very likely all fabrication, I start to get properly angry.

We do a lot wrong in the UK. But the NHS is something we're rightly proud of. It's not perfect, but it's genuinely a good thing. I've worked in it, I've seen the sort of legislative shit they have to put up with. Yet they soldier on being paid feck all money in the scheme of things doing what I consider to be one of the most righteous professions on the planet, simply because they care.

So I take it a little personally when some 'rock star' gives it some shit.

That's my rant over

That really sums it up perfectly.
My partner works in the Nelson hospital lab, doing blood tests and all that stufff that's necessary for operations and A+E etc, she works nightshifts and all the lot.
Tough stuff making the right decisions behind the scenes at 3 am in the morning to keep A+E going where lives depend on it.
I couldn't do it. She's amazing too.

I always find it interesting how many people here in the States think the NHS is a joke, because all they've heard about is the waiting list. They're always surprised when I tell them how much I miss it and how I would trade what we have for that in a minute. Waiting list were a bit frustrating but not being able to afford medical care at all is life threatening.

Of course I also miss the weather in England, so my opinion might not count for much. Being a California boy the four seasons were so interesting to me.

[Muadzin]

Some things just should not be allowed to be handled by the private sector. For the business of business is making money, whereas the business of healthcare should be providing affordable healthcare. And you can say a lot of bad things about governments, at their core business they're not being run at the principle that they should be making a profit, which is why I trust them a whole lot more with running healthcare for everybody then the private sector.

I wish the Dutch NHS was still being run like the British NHS. Unfortunately our government has drunk the 'private business is better at everything' coolaid and handed us all over to the power and ministrations of the medical insurance companies.

[juansolo]

I really hope we never end up with the bullshit of pure private healthcare. It's available here if you don't want to wait, but I like it being optional.

[culturejam]

I really hope we never end up with the bullshit of pure private healthcare. It's available here if you don't want to wait, but I like it being optional.

I wish the US would do this. Healthcare should be available to everyone (and paid for by everyone via taxes, etc), but expensive healthcare should also be available to the rich.

[blearyeyes]

Some things just should not be allowed to be handled by the private sector. For the business of business is making money, whereas the business of healthcare should be providing affordable healthcare. And you can say a lot of bad things about governments, at their core business they're not being run at the principle that they should be making a profit, which is why I trust them a whole lot more with running healthcare for everybody then the private sector.

I wish the Dutch NHS was still being run like the British NHS. Unfortunately our government has drunk the 'private business is better at everything' coolaid and handed us all over to the power and ministrations of the medical insurance companies.

Unfortunately the reason Government is so inefficient at running things is exactly because there is no profit incentive. It's just not like a public company that has to show it's shareholders profit or the president loses their job.  I wonder how good government run systems would become if our leaders jobs depended on them running efficiently with people centered healthcare, schooling and the lot.