"Socialized" healthcare

I thought I may as well weigh in on this one. Now this is merely my own opinions based on having grown up in a country with universal healthcare and now living in another.

I will not claim that the either country has a perfect system. Resources are finite and by this I mean both people and money. This means that decisions are made every day about what constitutes urgent care and necessary treatment. Presumably this is also the case with insurance-based healthcare. This does mean that there can be waiting lists for non-life threatening treatments and drugs are not always immediately approved. When it comes to life threatening things, however, people are seen quickly and generally treated well. Both my mother and MIL have had cancer in the last 10 years and been treated and released from followup. My nephew also had a condition when he was still a baby which required hospital care and follow up and none of these cost our family any money. Of course there are and will always be mistakes and differences in treatment, not least because the best practitioners tend to want to work in the biggest cities connected to university research.

BUT, and this is the crux of the matter for me, I have never and will never have to wonder if I can afford to go to the doctor or take my child to the doctor when ill. Yes I will have to pay something for any medication I am prescibed but it is not a lot and both systems have ways of helping those on low incomes with this expense. In the UK you pay a fixed charge for all medications regardless of what they are and here in Denmark you pay a percentage of the cost which reduces if you need a lot of medications in a year. In the UK certain groups get free prescriptions - children, pregnant women and those on low incomes.

Finally, I went through an entire pregnancy, birth and hospital stay and the healthcare didn't cost me a penny, not one, nor did the treatments related to my 2 failed pregnancies.

So you see, despite any failings in the systems I know about, the current system in the US where people with life-threatening illnesses can end up bankrupt and people have to decide between healthcare and food seems frankly insane.

"Helpful" mum

One of the women in my mother's group also works at T's nursery. She does not work in his room but is sometimes in charge of him when I pick him up since they all stagger their hours to cover the whole day. Now this woman never has a good thing to say - every time I see her she manages to critisize something about the way I look after T. I am getting seriously fed up with it because she always looks so concerned and uses a patronising professional childcarer voice as she tells me off. Despite the fact that I know that T is a happy kid and doing fine she manages to upset me every time because she plays on my mum-guilt.

Her latest contribution was to tell me that she thinks T is spending too long at nursery every day and it's not good for someone his age. She threw in that she thought this as a mother as well as a professional. She claims that he is unhappy for the last 2 hours before I pick him up and if I can't cut my hours I should pay someone to pick him up earlier so he gets some one-on-one time.

My logical brain says that no one else has mentioned this and he seems happy enough to me. Also he is currently teething and going through a scream if I don't get what I want stage. Finally he is really thirsty when I get him home and maybe that's why he's not super happy, it's not as if he can tell someone when he's thirsty.

Anyway I plan to ask the people who are actually in charge of T what they think. I was also wondering those of you who work outside the house - how long do your kids spend in nursery each day and how old are your kids?

Finally has anyone got any good responses next time she offers me "helpful" advice.

The male perspective

I read this article on Guardian online today and I think it's a really good insight into how a man feels about miscarriages and trying for a second baby. Definitely worth a read and explains really well how I feel my husband reacted to my grief by ignoring his.

Wordless Wednesday - fun with water

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