American doctor infected with Ebola

What would you consider okay for a single person to pay per month?  As I think it is all proportionate?  Healthcare in the US is not cheap for people with no or little insurance.  If you get a serious illness, it can wipe out all your money before you know it.  Also, prescription drugs are more expensive here.  The reason being that the vast amount spent on bringing a drug to the market is passed on to the American market whereas the rest of the world gets them cheap or relatively cheap.

For instance, some cancer pills cost $30,000 per pill.

I do think that healthy young people might consider it unnecessary until they get older or get it through their work.

In the meantime, I have good news, our Pres is on the ball.....golf, that is.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790237/war-rages-middle-east-dallas-confirms-second-ebola-victim-s-obama-hitting-links-200th-golf-game-president.html

I pay 65 Euros a month, Lily. That's about 50 pounds. I have to pay for my own prescriptions if I need any, which I mostly don't. Once in twenty years in fact. But then I don't go running to the Doctor at the slightest twinge.

Oh that's good actually, Sabot.  You wouldn't care to pay about 300 or 400 GBP a month just for yourself?

It might depend on what is covered, Lily. Mine is basic because I can't afford any more. Mainly just Hospital care. And I do get a percentage of cover as a UK Pensioner. But then I paid into that for all of my working life.

I have no idea what an average French person would pay. But I do know that The French Health System is above excellent. Which is far more than can be said for UK.

Ah, but your health insurance, like ours, isn't complicated, Sabot. It isn't sub-contracted to various health insurance companies via your employer, if you have one, and they haven't cut your hours in order to opt out of Obamacare.

You know, there is a nation close to America that has a world-beating record in healthcare, and has been doing fantastic work in the Third World for decades - its doctors and nurses are on the front line in Ebolaland, and have an enviable record.

Unfortunately for US citizens, it's Cuba, so Washington will NOT be going to them for advice or help. Though US citizens may start fleeing there if it gets really bad....

Good thinking, Bonny. Refugees going the other way.

I don't know much about health care contracted by employment. Can they just cut hours?

In the US these days? Yes, Sabot, they can pretty much do as they please. It's worth following sites like:

http://www.zerohedge.com/

which are finance-based, though they cover other stories.

It soon becomes clear that the US is, under all the bluster, in a LOT of trouble, with one of the most incompetent presidents, and run by the most corrupt politicians, just about in its history.

You will also see why Lily and I mutter about marxist theories being inflicted on the plebs, while the oligarchs loot the country.

If you wanted to dream up a healthcare system that combined the worst of socialism (bureaucracy, meddling and lecturing) with the worst of capitalism (big business hiking the price of aspirin, sick people being exploited for gain) you'd come up with Obamacare.

As an added insult to the Americans who ARE paying for this expensive experiment, the illegals currently flooding over the Mexican non-border get everything FREE. It's a complete shambles, and a recipe for disaster should Ebola keep spreading.

I subscribe to a Website written by one Dr Mercola who basically promotes more natural Health Care, but he often tackles the abuse by Drug Companies in The US, so I know a bit about that. Not that The US is the only place where this happens.

Here we go:

http://news.sky.com/story/1353393/ebola-second-texas-health-worker-tests-positive

Ebola: Second Texas Health Worker Tests Positive
The unnamed hospital worker was among those who treated a Liberian man who died of the disease in Dallas.

A second health worker at a Texas hospital where a man died of ebola has tested positive for the disease.

The unnamed member of staff reported they had a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated at at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

The health worker is the second person to have treated Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on 8 October.

Nina Pham, who is reported to be in stable condition, has been in isolation at the Dallas hospital since Friday.

More at link.

I would suggest that as the 'experts' can't even contain Ebola in a modern, Dallas hospital, then plans to send thousands of untrained US troops into Ebolaland must be put on hold.

Nurses are sounding their discontent, quite rightly too.  I know this is the Wail but it does show some useful photos.  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2792457/Ebola-patient-cared-70-hospital-staffers.html

IMO, the Mail is pretty much right for once, Lily:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/14/health/texas-ebola-nurses-union-claims/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The incompetence and arrogance from those at the top is astounding.

I don't understand how they got it 'wrong' in the first place, Bonny.  

Arrogance, I would guess, Lily. And if there is a lot of that attitude in those who have been 'helping' in Africa, it may explain why so many supposed experts and professionals have caught it?

This disease has been flaring up in Africa for a long while, remember, but was generally confined to remote villages which were easily quarantined. It did tend to end with the villagers either being dead or immune, and the village burned down, but it DIDN'T SPREAD.

It took the arrogance We Know Best Western 'experts' to spread it worldwide.

Those who know best have spread it rapidly too and this is barely even started.  

I find it appalling, Lily. People knew about concepts like QUARANTINE centuries ago - they had to, for their own survival. Yet in the 21st century, certain people are arrogant enough to think those basic rules have somehow changed because they are awfully clever? No, they haven't - I just hope too many people don't pay the price of such stupidity.

I fear that many people will be paying the price, Bonny.  I fear that the figures will be numbing.

http://www.infowars.com/bureaucrat-says-obama-doing-all-he-can-to-protect-health-care-workers-from-ebola/

That's quite a good overview of the whole shambles. And what happens when the flu season starts, as flu is very similar to early-stage Ebola?

Try Oscillococcinum. It's a French homeopathic remedy for flu, made out of chicken guts. And I haven't had flu for years and years.

Don't mock it. Half of the population of France take it.

Garlic, olive oil, lots of vitamin C and hot toddies as required. Or a moat, of course, to keep the Walking Dead at bay.

Those are the truest words any politician ever said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29632433

A nurse newly diagnosed in Dallas with Ebola took a flight from Cleveland the day before she showed symptoms, US health officials have confirmed.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is seeking to interview 132 passengers who flew on Frontier flight 1143 on 13 October.

The nurse, the second to contract the disease in the US, reported symptoms of Ebola on 14 October.

She had treated a Liberian national who died in Dallas on 8 October.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed in the US with Ebola, started showing symptoms of the disease just days after he arrived in Texas from Liberia, where he contracted the disease.

The two US female nurses known to be infected with Ebola treated him at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

The CDC said in a statement it would be interviewing the passengers on the Cleveland to Dallas flight because of the "proximity in time between the evening flight and first report of illness the following morning".

The flight crew told CDC investigators that the nurse showed no signs of illness on the flight.

Health officials say Ebola patients are not infectious before they show symptoms.

The thoughtlessness is just appalling. Who, in their right mind, goes travelling right after caring from someone dying of a horrible, infectious disease?

I am running out of words for the stupid. And I doubt if the CDC knows the exact moment when Ebola decides its going to become infectious - the CDC is proving to be as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

More madness:

http://www.infowars.com/memo-ebola-exposed-us-troops-to-be-quarantined-near-washington-dc/

But at least a glimmer of sense:


Indeed, the UK has declared that any of it’s 750 troops and doctors who are exposed to the virus will NOT be guaranteed repatriation to the UK, and instead will likely be treated in field hospitals in Sierra Leone.

I am, however, heart-sorry for the Scots troops - and their families - who are being ordered into a situation they simply are not trained to deal with.

Lily, is it possible that those supposedly 'in charge' in the US are being so cavalier about Ebola because they simply have no folk memory of horrible diseases wiping out civilisations?

I know there were cholera outbreaks in the cities, and large numbers of native Americans were wiped out deliberately with disease-infected blankets, etc., but there simply has never been anything like, say, Sweating Sickness, or even worse, Black Death.

Plague is part of European history, and the 1665 outbreak part of British history, and the folk memories and tales of horror are still with us.

There is a recent epidemic, Spanish Flu which ravaged the earth just after WW1. It killed 50 million people worldwide. LL
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29541235

Ah yes, that one often gets overlooked, doesn't it, as it came on the heels of the horrors of WWI. It must be serious, Obama's cancelled a fundraising trip:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/15/obama-cancels-trip-to-meet-on-ebola-outbreak/

President Barack Obama abruptly canceled a planned campaign trip Wednesday and planned to convene his Cabinet at the White House instead, as U.S. officials grappled with the widening Ebola crisis.

The White House said Obama's trip to New Jersey and Connecticut would be postponed to a later date. Obama was to speak to reporters on Wednesday afternoon after meeting with top officials who are coordinating the government's response to Ebola.

Obama's decision to nix the trip -- just a few hours before Air Force One was scheduled to depart -- reflected the urgency facing the administration amid the American public's escalating concerns about potential spread of the virus.

More at link.

I doubt if I can find it again, but someone, somewhere, made the worrying point that the US now has a worse infection record than the hospitals in the centre of this in Africa, as far as staff go.