In a stark contrast from the current healthcare system in the US, the UK has the National Health Service aka NHS. This is a socialised healthcare service that pretty sucks for preventive care but does fine if you get hit by a bus. It’s what you would expect from free health care. Service is generally poor…not terrible…but not great either. It’s certainly not all roses like the picture Michael Moore painted in Sicko. There are plenty of people that have fallen on that line between life-threatening and non-life-threatening that have gotten the fish and chips up their arse as a result.
As the US is shifting towards this public healthcare model, note that the NHS is going bankrupt and that overall I prefer privatised healthcare like most people in the UK get anyway because you want someone to look at that rash under your bum instead of defining it as “non-life-threatening” and telling you to bugger off.
I will end this blog by saying bollocks…just because.
There isn’t much need to write much more on the topic of Pay As You Go mobile services. I already talked about using it to call your family and friends at home for cheap and making sure to get 25% off your Skype credit top up. Well, they officially cemented their position in my hall of fame this month byoffering an amazing deal:
For every top up of 10 quid , you receive free for 90 days:
1. 600 texts (5 quid only gets you 25 text messages)
2. Unlimited In-network calling
3. 150MB of mobile Internet
4. Unlimited Skype use
5. Unlimted Windows Live Messenger use
With this kind of a deal with no commitment, there is absolutely no reason to go on contract unless you’re using an iPhone…in which case you should just PayPal me 20 quid just because…and I mean per month. I take it as a sign that mobile services are so commoditised and competition so fierce that you need to push the envelope to steal market share from your competitors. In this case, the nimbler 3 Mobile wins on Value and Simplicity. Yeah, Vodaphone offers free twittering, and O2 has the iPhone contract but for the cheap-arses, which is supposed to be most of us in this recession, 3 is the hands down winner.
