You won’t get this truth from Sicko
Dr Helen Evans, veteran senior nurse of Britain’s National Health Service and director of the London-based Nurses for Reform, speaking in the US last week:
After nearly six decades of epic Soviet-style failure, the NHS currently finds itself in a perilous state. As Britain enters the twenty-first century it has around one million people on its waiting lists and another 200,000 people trying to get onto them…
As a result of this situation, recent years have seen the re-birth of Britain’s private healthcare sector. Today, more than 6.5 million people have private medical insurance, 6 million have private cash benefits, 8 million pay privately for a range of complimentary therapies and 250,000 self-fund each year for private acute surgery. Millions more opt for private dentistry, ophthalmics and long term care…
As I look to the debate in the United States of America, I would urge you to use the market and not more state intervention to reform your healthcare system.
Filed under: Life
Here’s what I’m curious about. As an American, I have never made use of the NHS, or any other socialized medicine for that matter, but I’ve read a bit about it and have heard some wildly differing accounts. It’s either a fantastic system or an awful one, with no in-between. So I’m curious - does the quality of care vary regionally? As in, the wealthy parts of the country receive better treatment than, let’s say, the inner city of London?
Basically, I’m just wondering how truly equitable and socialized the medicine truly is. Equally bad/equally good for everyone, or what?
Kelly, those who think it’s fantastic are those who have an ideological committment to the idea, and most will at least admit that the care is not equitable and that it kills people. They will then usually blame this on “under-investment,” meaning, “We’re not forcing people to hand over enough of their paychecks”. The last forecasted budget for 2007/8 for the NHS that I can put my hands on quickly is £92.6 billion - over $184 billion. Even this is not enough to provide the fabled quality care.
Frankly, I would have no problem with the NHS if citizens were allowed to opt out of it and spend their hard-earned money on their own private medical insurance. But we are forced to finance the NHS whether we use it or not, whether it performs or not (and when a system is guaranteed funding regardless of performance, it doesn’t take a genius to work out how much incentive they have to do things well).
There is also something referred to as the “post code lottery,” which means that where you live does indeed determine the kind of care you’ll get. For example, 2004-5 spending on mental health in Islington (north London) was £259 per capita, while in Bracknell, Berkshire it was £66 per capita. Further:
More to the point, I’ve yet to find one NHS advocate who can tell me why any individual in their right mind would give the government a stake in their health, and therefore a vote or veto over how they live. For example, overweight people or those who smoke being seen as fair game for denial of NHS care, and liberty-killing laws prohibiting things like junk food advertising and smoking are rationalized by saying they will supposedly save the NHS money. It’s sheer madness.
Thank you for the detailed response! That does indeed shed some light on it for me.
I have to admit I am not entirely pleased with the way health care is handled in the US, but it’s a bit shortsighted to make the leap from that to the glorification of socialized health care. Is there nothing in between?
An actual free market would be amazing. The regulations that restrict healthcare right now are strangling us and the system. For example, insurance companies are not allowed to sell the same policy across state lines. It is ridiculous, and more regulation and state control is not a progressive approach.
I guess it comes down to exactly how much freedom insurance companies have to screw their customers. Although i agree that a competitive system, free market and all, is probably better than an NHS i think that insurance companies should be liable for what they do and accountable to someone… you can’t just deny people left and right and invest more money into finding ways to deny people than in helping them out.