Twilight – I don’t think your medicare makes any difference. My “Family Doctor” is bloody useless, and while he’s not kept me waiting as long as yours did, I have sat in one of his ‘examination rooms’ for close on thirty minutes, waiting for him to put in an appearance. It’s highly frustrating, particularly when you can hear him down the corridor, laughing and joking with his staff. My cardiologist is the best: he’s a little Indian man who’s obsessed with cricket. He trained at a London teaching hospital and worked there for some years before moving to Canada and working for their health service. Then he moved to the US. He believes in socialist medicine, says the Canadian system is better than the British, but both are an improvement on the US healthcare system, which, he says, “stinks.”

Nevin – welcome to Sparrow Chat. I agree with you. The whole drug/insurance industry in America is a disgrace. Sewer rats have more ethics.

I find it utterly insane that there are companies who are profiting from human misery. Let’s face it, those insurance companies who are making money do so, off sick peoples backs…

Maybe this is the Medicare version of America’s health service, but we both pay hefty supplementary insurance on top of Medicare A and B, and pay for all our medications.

So far I remain unimpressed. But I hate doctors anyway, so it’d take a lot for me to be impressed!

In the old days we used to hang people for this sort of highway robbery.