Medicina pública o privada: texto en inglés sobre el tema

Private or Public Medicine?

If I were a rich person I wouldn´t have any doubts at all about this question: I´d prefer private medicine.

Why? Because when you have enough money to pay for private medicine services you are the owner of your time: you´re sure that you´ll receive the best personal attention and whenever you´re ill you will be treated, and this is a very important matter to have in mind nowadays: people suffering from cancer usually save their lives if they are faster than this terrible illness.

On the other hand, if you have money you will avoid the worst things people without money are used to putting up with: waiting  lists, worse attention for each person and the illegal behaviour of lots of doctors that work in both public and private medicine.

Actually, waiting lists are the worst inconvenient when you have to decide which type of medicine services you would like "to belong to". I mean, if you have symptoms of any illness but you aren´t checked in time you can lose your life in a stupid way. However, if you are discovered to have a cancer or something like that soon, you´ll be able to win the battle against it. In this sense public medicine is worse than private.

This is linked with the second point against public medicine: each doctor must look after lots of patients. This makes it hardly impossible to compare the quality of the attention provided to public medicine patients with that given to private medicine ones. You´ll find that there are only 5 or 6 minutes for each patient, and this attention will be worse because the doctor will be tired and bored, having had twenty or more visits in the morning. A private doctor will be with you for an hour or more, and he will study your situation in detail. In fact, he will be paid a very big quantity of money...

Finally, the third and most dangerous factor we´re discussing: these mean greedy doctors that work in both public and private medicine, and give a worse attention in the first one than in the second. These dangerous "professionals" are used to being paid by the same patient twice, the first one through the public administration (as a matter of fact, their patients are given a very bad attention: there isn´t enough time for them and doctors don´t devote more than 5 minutes to examining them) but the second time this patient pays the same doctor, he is a very different person: he speaks with him, he knows his name and illness, he is worried about him (about his money...).

All these things make me think that if I were a rich man I would prefer private medicine services. But what happens if I´m not a rich person?

If you don´t have enough money to pay for it, you may die at the hospital´s door. Not everybody can afford private medicine services. In fact, it´s very expensive to have an appointment with the doctors without waiting from two to seven or more months.

If you aren´t rich, nobody will hurry about you, nobody will pay attention to a person without money to be stolen by vampiric doctors.

If you aren´t so rich as people with three cars and a big house next to the beach, you won´t have right to anything. You´ll simply dissappear.

And these are the reasons that make me feel more attached to public medicine than to private: in spite of the disadvantages it has, I prefer a system that takes care of everybody and has better equipment and better professionals than one that avoids the problems of the first but can only be used by a reduced number of patients.

It is not only a question of human ideals, but also a question of improving our world. It´s on us!