Yep. An American friend of mine’s wife was in ICU for 10 days recently and will need long term help to recover. He is fully insured and reasonably well off. So far he is £40K out of pocket and says he expects that might go to £100K. I repeat, he is as fully insured as it is possible to be. The cover just does not go very far.
Depends. Some are 80:20 policies, some do have capped expenditure. Mine certainly did, it just cost 50% more and had a higher deductible or whatever they call it.
I had a US friend on facebook, who sadly passed away. He told some of his UK friends how things really worked. and the cost to him and his family. His illness sadly killed him but his bill was in the tens of thousands and I think his insurance only covered a portion of that. It also, if I remember correctly, didn’t initially cover some of the exploratory details required prior to full diagnosis.
It was quite a harrowing experience and even though we never actually met him it really hit us quite hard after his passing. I know for a couple of us it actually made us quite angry. If he hadn’t documented this we would have been unaware of the REAL machinations of US healthcare. It involved him downsizing his home and moving his family to a cheaper, and more dangerous, part of town.
My brother lives in the US. His father-in-law (a retired podiatric surgeon who’d been in private practice his whole life) just had to have a knee replacement done. He also really needs his house re-roofing. The costs meant he could only afford one of these two things. He chose the knee and is crossing his fingers that the roof will make it through one more winter (Youngstown OH, where it can snow).
I will say though that the quality of the knee job and the associated hospital care seems to have been first rate. He recovered fast with little pain and is walking very much better. His kids rallied round to look after him after the op which meant he could be released from hospital early. Which reduced the bill.
VB
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Except it was because he chose to go to an out of coverage provider for extra treatment 
no doubt the quality is very good, fingers crossed for his roof.
When I spent some time out in the usa a few years ago I found it quite alarming seeing the local hospital with a billboard outside advertising heart ops in the same way my local lidl advertises it’s weekly deals.
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Colleague / contemporary of yours @htm_1968 ?
No.
She was at Roehampton and was really a Professor of Strategy and Sustainability rather than a Professor of Economics going by her title.
She has some decent work in environmental/ecological economics (mostly books though and not peer-reviewed journal articles) but I don’t know her. She only joined academic faculty in 1998, by which time I had been in Straya for 4 years.
I work in completely different areas from her (largely orthodox macro and financial econometrics).
She was quite engaged with the Association of Heterodox Economics, which would go a fair way to explaining why our paths have not crossed. FWLIW Heterodox Economics covers weird things like Institutional, Evolutionary, Georgist (out there), Austrian, Feminist. Social, post-Keynesian (real nutters and not to be confused with New Keynesian), Ecological, Marxian [loonies], Socialist and Anarchist (
) economics.
FWLIW, I’ve only really ever had to deal with post-Keynesians (invariably mad). The other schools of though are far too far from the mainstream to be in any way credible IMHO.
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How d’ya mean?
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I couldn’t have put it better myself Olan.
I could…
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah BUY IT SELL IT blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah BUY IT SELL IT blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah economics is brainy like.
This is a bit like you PFM exchange on switches really isn’t it? 
How is your knowledge of architecture??
Ah but networking is enthralling and riveting whereas economics is just boring 
That and talking networking winds up that stupid CK cunt on pfm
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There is a field called network economics which needs you input obviously.
It is really fecking boring to be honest.
But undoubtedly she is better qualified to comment on the subject than the Brexit Party twat who called her out!
Dunno about that at all. She would need a fairly advanced knowledge of macroeconomics and trade theory to have any chance. She started as a Labour economist (microeconomics) and moved to environmental/ecological economics (not mainstream now, pretty out there 15 years ago).
She might have better general knowledge than Brexit twat. There is a bowl of Greek Salad in my fridge that probably has better general knowledge than Brexit twat.
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The trouble is, if you go on twatter you can see countless examples of Labour (mainly momentum) supporters spouting hideously antisemetic bollocks at perfectly innocent people.
How much of that can be blamed on Corbyn is debatable, but I’d definitely say he’s been very weak in response. People that should have been removed from the party years ago, are clinging on under the guise of “being under investigation”.
I’m no tory, I effing hate them with a passion, but they’ve been very quick to remove and denounce islamaphobes from the party… All of them bar racist-in-cheif Boris himself of course.
But how many are actually Party members ?