NHS saves lives
I would be interested to hear from our American readers whether or not this could happen in the US.
My wife and I had a baby on Feb 2nd this year. The Brits here will remember the day. The country was shut down due to snow. He was fine for a while but, after a couple of hours, developed problems requiring an operation. Operations on new-borns require 2 specialist paediatric anaesthetists - the nearest setup was many miles away at Alder Hay, Liverpool. Our son was placed in a specialist incubator and we were collected by ambulance and driven, with Blues and Twos, through the snow to our local airport. We were placed in an air-ambulance and flown (at very low altitude, to protect the baby) to Liverpool airport - which was closed. They opened the airport for us to land (in thick snow) where another ambulance collected us and drove us to Alder Hay. It was now midnight. The surgical team operated on him from 01:30 to 03:00. We were put up in Ronald McDonald house for two nights and were taken home by the same combination of Ambulance-Air Ambulance-Ambulance that Wednesday.
We were never asked for insurance or payment. Ronald McDonald (a charity) asked us if we could pay for the cost of our room - we were more than happy to - but that was the only money we paid out over the whole thing. He's fine now, by the way.
Could that happen to two ordinary people in the US without health insurance? I'd be really interested to know.