By Greg Dobbs
The Denver Post, April 23, 2012
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND — When I’m sick, I want the world’s best health care as much as anybody.
That’s why I’m happy to report that 36 hours after launching on a fantastic journey through the length and depths of my digestive tract — after I collapsed and almost died more than a week ago from massive internal bleeding — an expensive and innovative tool called the PillCam, collecting almost 60,000 diagnostic images inside me to pinpoint the problem, has just completed its mission.
The thing is, this wasn’t at the internationally famous Mayo Clinic, or the vaunted Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, or our own world-class University of Colorado Medical Center.
It was at the big, battle-tested, National Health Service trauma center in Belfast, Northern Ireland, called Royal Victoria Hospital — known to locals as well as reporters like me who covered the warfare here in the 1970s and ’80s as the Royal Vic.
It hasn’t been a perfect experience. I’ve felt lost in the chaos of the emergency room. I’ve had bloodlines spring leaks where they’re inserted in my arms. I’ve heard fellow patients screaming all night. And I’ve been presented with a couple of plates of food I wouldn’t pay for at a restaurant. But you know what? It’s a hospital! As a veteran of life-threatening traumas, I’ve suffered the same at institutions in the United States.
More important, just as I have in American hospitals, I’ve had the high-tech procedures I needed when I needed them. Two angiograms, two endoscopies, CT scans, X-rays, a colonoscopy, and that tiny alien capsule that I swallowed, the PillCam.
Some argue that in a universal health care system like this one, you’ll get urgent care only if you have urgent needs.
Well, about 10 years ago when my back collapsed and I was reduced to crawling around with screaming pain until I could have some vertebrae fused, I’d say the need was pretty urgent. But it took a week and a half to get me into surgery. That was in suburban Denver.
The bottom line is, maybe it’s socialized medicine, but the doctors and nurses and procedures and protocols here are first-rate; they saved my life.
By the way, I have pre-existing conditions, which disqualify me for most insurance at home. Except for personal medical history to help treat me, no one here even asked. In fact, the bureaucracy is so minimal and the priorities so different, no one has even asked to see an identification card to prove who I am, let alone a credit card to prove my ability to pay.
And the cost? The “emergency” parts — the ambulance, the ER, the transfusions — came with no charge. The rest? Oh, since I only came to Belfast to shoot a television news segment and don’t pay taxes and thus am not insured, I’ll pay all right, but since the model for hospital revenue isn’t based on market-driven, sometimes-price-gouging profit centers, I won’t pay through the nose.
If you think it’s no different in the U.S., you’re not paying attention.
But here’s the biggest difference between the two health care systems: This one is open for everybody. Residents don’t have to assess and agonize over the cost because they don’t have insurance. If they need medical care at any level, they just go. As I did. And get fixed. As I am.
And guess what: Anyone here who doesn’t like their universal health care system and wants something more can have it, through private insurance, if they’re willing and able to pay for it. Gee. That’s just like us.
Greg Dobbs is a Denver-based correspondent for “World Report” on HDNet television.