A few thoughts

Blocking access and not having the cash to pay are two separate things

Six extra months? At what cost

Can still contribute to society? If you can afford to buy your own meds what are you contributing to society?

Six extra months at a gazillion dollars.

Terminal is terminal. That is what hospice is for. To help with the transition from living to death in a humane manner.

Besides, why wouldn't big Pharm want their products to be affordable enough that normal salaries/deductibles/insurance practices cover them.

fyi - I've been the parent of a non-contributing child as jujlp puts it and (like most adults) have seen people move towards death gracefully and as well as some fighting tooth and nail the whole way whatever the cost to anyone around them. It is what it is.

While I'm no fan of government-funded health care, you do have to realize that this is no different with private insurance. Your insurance has things it pays, and things it doesn't. When you reach your cap, or when a medication isn't on their list, they don't pay either.

Government funded healthcare has three problems:

- People seem to think that the government has a bottomless bucket of money, and should pay everything for everyone.

- Government organizations are horribly inefficient, because there is never any real motivation to remove bloat. So petty bureaucrats build petty little empires, and the actual purpose of the organization becomes secondary.

- Having only a single program removes choice. If there is a government program, there's no excuse to not let people opt out and go private anyway. Let's see which programs are the best, shall we?

@lujlp & random: You don't appear to understand that the UK's NHS is a sole provider system. Paying for treatment or medication is unlawful and going to another country to receive treatment or medications is grounds for the government to terminate eligibility for any (or, even all) services under the NHS. Canada is different in that it is a "single payor" system ( the government will pay - eventually- for any care or medication you are determined eligible for, which it covers), but, you can purchase private insurance or go to another country to receive treatment or medications either not covered or because you don't choose to wait the months to years until that will be provided. So, the Canadian system is similar to the VA system in the U.S., and Canadians who can afford to, come to the U.S. for care and medications needed sooner than those are available in Canada.
So, in the UK, if the NHS does not provide the treatment or medication, your choices are suffer, or die, or go to the black market. Cost is the primary factor determining eligibility as the budget determines availability.
And while Obama (and, Trump) favor a single payor system, like Canada, what Hillary proposed (when Bill was Prez) was a sole provider system. Both are very different from private insurance because you can always buy different or additional insurance (my spouse & I are covered under 2 plans & our special needs child is also covered by Medicaid), or you can pay cash (which is the way we pay for most dental care).

What Wfjag said. Also, Amy's complaint is that most of her health care dollars are being spent on political rent seeking.

Thanks, Wfjag, for explaining that.

I'm not sure that description of UK healthcare is entirely correct. I have several acquaintances in the UK from parenting forums, a couple who also happen to work for the NHS. As I've heard from their posts, there are other care options available as well and you don't have to use NHS services, just most do because they don't have to pay for it. It did sound like you couldn't use both though, meaning you couldn't get NHS care and also be paying for services at the same time.

Besides, why wouldn't big Pharm want their products to be affordable enough that normal salaries/deductibles/insurance practices cover them.

Becuase as long as idiots are willing to overpay why not take their money?

I posted a linkie in one of the linkies with a side bacon threads about the estimate that something on the order of 307K VA patients died while on a waiting list.

That is our future, as the VA is a single payer system that our betters desire to inflict upon us. What? you think you deserve better treatment than someone who served?

Oh, and the people who put them on secret waiting lists denying them care? got bonuses and promotions based on their efficiency...

Really good piece on this issue here by Peter Wehner:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/09/06/the-wrong-fight-for-christians-to-wage/

Regardless of where one stands on gay marriage, the idea that granting a marriage license to a gay couple is the moral equivalent of enslaving another human being is, to put it gently, deeply confused. Only a person who has no conception of the horror of slavery would invoke it.

Kim Davis may well be a person of sincere views. She may also believe she’s taking a principled moral stand. In fact, she’s being selective in which of God’s moral laws she insists must be obeyed – and obeyed not by those attending her church but by those living in our broader society. She could have allowed her deputies to issue the marriage licenses, preventing her from violating her conscience. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted to make this a (figurative) hill to die on.

In doing so, she’s inadvertently doing a disservice to her faith, furthering the impression to a watching world that sex, and homosexuality in particularly, is a fixation of modern-day Christian. The result is to reduce “a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex,” in the words of David Brooks. There was no need for Ms. Davis – or Governor Huckabee and Senator Cruz – to elevate this issue into a national fight Christians are destined to lose, and, in this case, ought to lose.

Just wait until the long-delayed employer mandate kicks in. You know, the can the Obama Administration has been kicking down the road for the past two years.

Most working Americans are still on an exempted employer plan and so haven't been hit with the reality of Obamacare.