Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for June 17, 2022

The UK government sent a brochure to every household when the NHS was instituted in 1948. It had this passage in it:

It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone — rich or poor, man, woman or child — can use it or any part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a “charity”. You are all paying for it, mainly as tax payers, and it will relieve your money worries in time of illness.

Today’s strip is an excellent argument in favor of universal health care, and it doesn’t even make any references to Hitler.

Here in Italy HC is almost free: nobody pays for the family doctor. Of course we pay HC with our taxes.

Poor Pig, his mood is harsher by Rat once again!

⇑ What BE THIS GUY quoted

Another advantage to living in almost any developed or developing country in the world except the US.

Only in America.

Even with health care you get sick and die.

Yes let’s have the government involved in our healthcare since they run things so well. There has to be another way.

The insurance companies run healthcare. They run the doctors and nurses into the ground.

Jesus healed for free. But His followers think it should bankrupt you.

The dullard trolls here are trying to convince folks that healthcare isn’t such a big deal.

It isn’t. Right up until you get sick or injured. Then it becomes a massively big deal. And that is the point that the ReThuglicans trolls want y’all to not realize.

Care to guess what is still after decades the #1 reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States of America? It’s healthcare debt. And guess what! An incredibly large portion of those bankruptcies were and are for folks who did have health insurance.

Get sick or hurt in America? Be prepared to lose your house. It happens far too often. But nowhere near as often as when the ReThuglicans in the senate obstruct haelthcare reform with their lies and posturing. Not losing your house? Y’all still might have to choose between paying those insurance bills and hospital bills or paying for the car or missing meals or the kids new shoes.

I’ve never dealt with a Government agency that was as bureaucratic as a health insurance company.

How about giving people the option of public or private health care, like they have in other countries? It works. And we do it here with other things. We have public and private schools. Libraries and bookstores.

We have a completely broken health care system, and we can’t fix it because a handful of people are making tons of money from the broken system. And those people have bribed legislators.

Very little is free anymore.

In a healthy society, the goal, to an extent, is to socialize medical costs and privatize the benefits. In that manner, no one is left to suffer poverty due to an illness. In the US, this has been flipped so that the less wealthy are now left to fend for themselves….or die and decrease the excess population.

It seems that rich and powerful people will often try to make basic human rights like healthcare unattainable by non-rich people.

Oh crap we’re closed!

Wait til you get the bill….

Obesity is epidemic in this country. Smoking and vaping continue to ravage those who voluntarily use the products. Drug abuse is rampant and only getting worse. Maybe when people start caring enough to take care of themselves, as opposed to this slow motion suicide we call the American lifestyle, I’ll give a Rat’s ass about them getting “health care.”

Most Americans are relatively satisfied with their employer provided health insurance. This is mainly due to the employer paying on average 85% of an individual policy with pre-tax money, so the employee often believes he/she is only paying a nominal amount. Currently if the premium is $800 the employer will pay $680/ employee $120. Now if the employer increased the employee’s pay by $680 and the employee then had a write a premium check for $800 he would realize how much it actually cost and may be more open for a way to fund health care.

I’m spending five thousand Monday to repair my incisors… It’s a nightmare.

No good or service is free. The surest way to lose control of both the quality and the cost of any good or service is to disconnect the source of funding for it from the beneficiaries of it.

Let’s cure pig.

The problem with universal health care is that it is always provided at the lowest possible standard. In the UK the wait list is horrible for elective procedures. They think they get great service but they have accepted a level that is ridiculous.

Or get charged an arm, and a leg. Only in America

Not that bad but not too far off…..

There is so much freedom in having the basic needs covered, regardless of what circumstances you may encounter.Like for example just the health care for you and your family isn’t tied in to an insurance connected to your job, that makes it much easier to quit if the job sucks or if just wanna start your own. That means more power for the employees, which again means better working conditions and just more freedom.

When it comes to providing healthcare for its citizens USA is the most backward of comparable countries. Friends and family Spain, Canada and personal experience in the UK LOVE their healthcare policies and practices. You could take a TINY percentage of our military budget and provide everyone in this country with healthcare.

My wife spent a week in NHS (Canada version) for a cancer biopsy and tests. Private room, the only charge was parking which for the week cost me $4 total, most of the time they waved me through.

She will have home care visits, a hospital bed, incontinence supplies and such. The only expense is half a tank of gas to get to distant hospital and back, which may be reimbursed. And take out coffee, lots of take out coffee, hospital food there is great, coffee, not so much.

Rat, I’m pretty sure even without healthcare, we are all eventually going to get sick and die. I hate to be a downer, but that’s the truth.

If you do have ‘health care’, does that mean that you won’t get sick and die?

Sure health care may not be free, Rat, but even if it’s not exactly the best thing in life, it’s still important.

Take off eh, hoser. :)

The US Government does the same thing, providing free health care, medical, dental, and nursing. Paid for by the US taxpayers. It is called the VA Hospital. You can ask anyone about the quality of service, the time to get an appointment, and follow up care. If that is the best the government can do, I’ll stay with expensive private health care.

Thanks to backward uncivilized republiguns we can’t have the things like universal medical care that every civilized country has.

Pigs get sick??

I know a millionaire…who’s burning up with care…a load is on his mind…

He’s t hinking of the day…when he must pass away…and leave his wealth behind…..

Not “you”, “Americans”. Nobody else in the civilized world has to choose between bankruptcy and death.

When we were in England, my Mother had to visit the emergency room. We were seen immediately, possibly because she was older and they weren’t sure what was wrong with her. We asked for the bill, explaining that we were Americans and didn’t qualify for the free medical care. They replied that they didn’t have any forms for making out a bill, no one who would know how to make out the form if they had one and anyway everyone who was getting paid was busy taking care of sick people. On the other hand, when my son needed surgery for his cancer, he had to wait six weeks for the doctor to have an opening in his schedule. And, later, his treatments were postponed because the insurance company was deciding whether to pay for them. This was the president of the Midwestern Prostate Ontological group being dictated to by a pencil pusher who probably never graduated from college. That was in Saint Louis, Missouri, United States of America. We pay more for medical care than anyone else on earth and it’s not because we are paying for actual medical care. We are spending money to support a huge insurance industry with money that then isn’t available to provide for patient care.

We all want top notch health care when we need it and someone else to pay for it.

Better watch out Stephan. It looks like Non Sequitur may be out to get you.

They are not. That’s a Republican talking point. If the super rich were ever going to go abroad for medical treatments they sure as hell wouldn’t go to the US. Every country in Europe alone has far better medical services than the US along with more safety and better food. The US rates about 35th in life expectancy and 33rd in infant mortality. That should tell you all you need to know.

Non-Sequitur was a better Pearls Before Swine ,today

Republicans want health care to be costly so that it can be denied to Those People.

.

After all, if everyone gets to go, it’s not Heaven.

Only in America . . .

The best things in life are not things.

Gotta admit, this one’s both really funny and really true at the same time.

Funny, if you have it you’re just as likely to get sick and die.

Health Care is only free in modern, First World countries. It’s not free in certain backwards, “$h1thole countries”.

… Yeah, basically.

This is the republican plan, if you cannot afford health care or insurance you don’t deserve to have it.

You know what the ‘80s Wise Guys used to say: life’s a beach, and then you die.

Same idea here, PBS version….

Meh. But you can die happy, so there.