[Quiet Man Cometh]

But how many people in situations like that die at home from not even trying to go to the doctor in the first place?

It's true though, that you can't just flip one method for the other and have things work. There would need to be big changes in infrastructure, and that takes some serious investment.

[Ashy]

Of course the money has to come from somewhere, its called free healthcare because it's free for the low income to use. And I agree with pogs, id rather see my money going to healthcare than on military spending.

Obviously to begin with its going to be hard, weve only had subsidised healthcare since the 80s and the system was screwed then. They went through this phase when i was a kid of making you pay $80 up front that they would refund later, apparently i almost died over it. Also theres going to be fewer clinics to begin with but more will open as the need arises, if you feel there arent enough you should write to your local politician(i dont really know how your system works).

Oh and theres no such thing as a walk up clinic here, but if it's urgent but not urgent enough to go to a hospital usually a doctor will squish you in, like the time i needed stitches in my knee.

[Yokuutsu]

Going to my local politician will not make a free clinic open. There's only one doctor I know of in this area that even accepts walk ins. And she tends to overmedicate...though she does at least try to find the problem for the people who go to her compared to my doctor's nothing is wrong with you...when there was obviously something wrong.

Also, more clinics won't open if future doctors feel like they won't make enough money to pay off loan debt to go to school...there will be less doctors. Of course, there is no way to judge how many will change their minds. Some will still do it because they want to help people, like if I had went to be a doctor, yes I would like money, but I would like to help people too.

[Dorian Pavus]

Oh God, I started a thing.
Well, here's my thought on the whole thing as one of those "Lazy poor people" that don't have a job. (Not saying that any of you guys think that, but thats what I hear on the tv all the time any more. I don't have a job = being a lazy F**k. )

My family is dirt poor, yea? All three adults are jobless and my brother is still too young for a job. My Dad is handicapped & Diabetic the state helps pay for his things, but we still have to pay $25 a month for all of his meds and around $50 for his Diabetic supplies and other such things.

Right now we live in low-income housing thats cheap because we are living off my father's disability check. That pays the bills and little else. I pay for food when I can (I paint and sell those when I can), other than that we don't have a reliable source of money for food. If I do poorly one month we go without food for a few days or have to eat bread & butter for a few weeks.

I want a job, my mom wants a job, however there's nothing available for us that's anything more than minimum wage around here. The kicker is that because our housing is income based, our rent will go up $500 PER JOB. That works out to use both needing 3 part time jobs each to make enough to feed our family after rent, however there is a cap to how much you can make to live the (low income) housing and we would exceed that with that many jobs. So we'd be homeless again. on top of that I go to uni more than full time. Most days I'm there from the crack of dawn to dusk, if not later. I don't have time for a job as I have one that doesn't pay me anything and puts me farther in the hole money wise.

I only have partial Health care through my Uni which only pays for accidents that happen on campus and life threatening things that happen within campus grounds. That's it.
If some ass-hat runs me down on the other side of town they might as well bring the morgue van because I don't have the money for the ambulance. There's also a 25% up front, co-pay that we can't afford. We can't even afford the co-pay.

If one of us gets sick or hurt, well tuff poop. We can't even afford the doctor visit fee for the "Low income" places. I can't get my Anti-depressant pills, I know I have Diabetics but can't pay for the test to get a disability payment to help pay for it. My mom has a non-cancerous tumor that needs to come out and my brother's teeth are a mess...and there's nothing we can do about it. Nothing.

I'm NOT saying free health care will fix all our problems, but It would give me a little bit of peace to know I won't die in my sleep for "x" reason that I already knew was a problem.

That's where I come from.