Saturday, July 25, 2009

What Socialized Medicine Gets You

This post could also be titled, "And They'll Wonder Why Swine Flu Became Tamiflu Resistant." What follows is a message board post by a wedding photographer in a Flickr Group (I've highlighted a few things):
We were due to shoot a wedding this Saturday for a lovely couple who's cousin's wedding we shot last year. Unfortunately the last few days I have been starting (and continuing!) to feel ill with cold symptoms.

Because swine flu is so all over the place now in the UK, doctors are no longer actually seeing/testing patients, you go online or phone a helpine, answer some questions on symptoms and if you r symptoms match up to those for swine flu, you phone a dr and they arrange for you to get some tamiflu.

In short, I could have a cold, or bad hayfever (although I know it's not hayfever as antihistamines haven't worked), but I have cancelled the wedding as I don't want to risk infecting a whole wedding group with swine flu especially as there will be children there. Luckily for me, I have a friend who is a local photographer who is very good, and he is miraculously free and will be shooting for me.

The thing is though, with the rubbish non diagnosis we're having over here, what if this is only a summer cold and in two weeks time I actually DO get swine flu and have no option but to take it to a wedding?

There you have it. In order to "remove unnecessary costs" from the system, you may not even get to see a doctor or receive tests many would deem "necessary." And the worst part is even if Obamacare ultimately dies the death it deserves to die, this will likely still negatively affect us as this willy-nilly approach to Swine Flu diagnosis in countries with socialized medicine will greatly increase the likelihood of a Swine Flu that is resistant to medications that normally could reduce the virus's severity.

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