Excerpt from National Review:
The Boyle ceremony got underway with images of a bucolic Britain being swept away by a cigar-chomping elite that builds satanic mills filled with oppressed workers as steeplejacks hang from the towering chimneys. Later, 600 doctors and patients recruited from National Health Service hospitals were featured in a bizarre tribute to socialized medicine, with children bouncing up and down on 320 hospital beds arrayed in front of a giant Franken-baby wrapped in bandages. Villains from British children’s literature, ranging from Cruella de Vil to Lord Voldemort, sweep in on the children, in an apparent reference to conservative forces seeking to reform the tottering NHS. The 15-minute sequence ended with a series of red lights triumphantly spelling out “NHS.â€
Left-wingers were thrilled. “Brilliant that we got a socialist to do the opening ceremony,†tweeted Alastair Campbell, former communications chief for the Labour party. Boyle denied he was promoting a political agenda. “The sensibility of the show is very personal,†he told reporters. “We had no agenda other than . . . values that we feel are true.†At a news conference beforehand, he explained that one of the reasons he “put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important NHS is to everybody in the country. One of the core values of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care.â€
Can anyone seriously believe that? Sunday’s British papers report that a study by the research firm Lloyd’s TSB Premier Banking found that nearly two-thirds of Britons earning more than $78,700 a year have taken out private health insurance because they don’t trust the NHS. A survey by the British health-care organization Bupa found that two-thirds of its customers cited the risk of infection from superbugs as a top reason for buying private insurance. Shaun Matisonn, the chief executive of PruHealth, says that “patients today are sophisticated consumers of health care. They research the treatments they want, but cannot always get them through the NHS.â€
Horror stories about the NHS abound. A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as “a lottery.†A new study this year by GP magazine supports that conclusion. Through Freedom of Information Act records, it found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care.
Rick Dewsbury of the Daily Mail was aghast at the worship of the NHS during Friday’s Olympic ceremony. The columnist noted the sheer hypocrisy of the spectacle, as “the majority of the athletes taking part in the Games will have access to the most expensive cutting-edge private treatment available in the world for even the slightest graze on their bodies.â€
Dewsbury recounted the 2009 case of Kane Gorny, a 22-year-old NHS patient. Gorny was admitted to the hospital for a hip replacement. A series of hospital employees refused his request for a glass of water and failed to give him diabetes medication. He went so far as to call the emergency operator for help. When the police arrived, nurses assured them that Gorny was confused and needed no outside help. A day later, he was dead of dehydration. The official inquest into his death was published this month. It found that neglect by hospital staff — “a cascade of individual failures†— contributed to his death. Here’s hoping that not everyone is “treated the same†in Britain’s NHS hospitals.
In Britain, we have seen what could be our future, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Link to full article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312573/britain-s-nhs-no-fun-and-games-john-fund
In the article it states…
“nearly two-thirds of Britons earning more than $78,700 a year have taken out private health insurance because they don’t trust the NHS.”
A 78 grand per year salary is an extremely good salary in Great Britain. The median income over there is even lower than in the U.S., so the large majority of the people of Great Britain can’t afford private health insurance. The problem in the U.S. is the same.
I’m not writing to either defend or attack the idea of national health insurance. I’m writing to propose that CCO follow up this article with one that offers some possible solutions that might make more affordable health insurance and health care available to the American people.
In 2010 the average income in the United States was $41,673 while the same in Great Britain was $42,120 based on the exchange rate of 1.62 pounds per dollar at that time. The wage averages are essentially the same in these countries.
As for solving the problem of expensive healthcare, the Congress of the USA and the President can’t solve it, the British Parliament has not solved it, and neither have the Canadians. Some are better than others but the wealth of the nations are not sufficient to really make everything available to everybody. Even in the USSR the wealthy fled the country for better options while the people were left to the socialized system that could not even supply crutches as needed. Are we flailing at windmills and searching for the holy grail here?
Davis for Mayor!
Health rationing? Are we going to pretend that we DON’T have health rationing by class / income here in the gold ole’ U.S.A.? Dollars = better insurance = better access to more types of care. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never battled with a faceless insurance agent over the phone over denial of coverage for a particular physician (because they aren’t “in the system”) or a treatement or procedure that isn’t covered. Our health care is being ‘rationed’ by for-profit insurance companies. To say otherwise is foolish.
As far as “horror stories about the NHS abound”… I suspect I could, with very little effort, match these stories with some homegrown horror stories submitted by CCO readers. In addition to examples of negligent care, rampant overprescription of pharmaceuticals, uncaring staff, or any other issues the article points out, I would be happy to add personal bankruptcy due to medical bills as another delightful side effect of our stellar U.S. health care system.
I get it, though. Hate the gubmint getting involved in health care. Hate it with every fiber of your being. Hate it until you’re old enough to get on Medicaid and then clutch that entitlement with both hands until your knuckles turn white. Hate it as much as you want – – but stop pretending that our system is some type of flawless, shining example for the rest of the world to follow. It’s okay to admit there are major problems with U.S. healthcare. The government isn’t the entire answer, but a rational player will (perhaps begrudgingly) have to admit it’s not the entire problem, either.
“Hate it with every fiber of your being. Hate it until you’re old enough to get on Medicaid and then clutch that entitlement with both hands until your knuckles turn white.”
Silly boy, I meant clutch onto MedicARE when you get old enough. Especially Part D – – The largest expansion of government health entititlements in recent memory.
MedicAID is for low-income earners, and a completely different program that everybody loves to hate…
Neither the article nor the CCO has ever said that the healthcare system in the USA is perfect. It clearly is not. Drug pricing here as compared to Mexico or Canada is criminal. Rationing by a government that says for example “only 10 MRI’s per week” when 20 are needed as NHS is accused of is not the same as the system we have here where those with good insurance can get most of what they need. Medicare and Medicaid in the US have certainly been accused of rationing and slow walking care that people think they have coming to them. Once again, the CCO has never ever furthered the idea that our system is anything more than okay.
The article goes out of it’s way to point out flaws in the NHS of the UK, and it’s hardly a stretch (since the article is by the National Review, hardly an unbiased reporting agency) to say that the implication of the closing sentence is how dreadful any form of nationalized healthcare is compared to the current U.S. system. You (not you, the CCO editor, but you, the author of the article) don’t HAVE to state that our U.S. system is perfect to make an overt ‘anti’ argument, you merely have to print an article that says “Yeah, our system may suck unless you’re rich and/or well-insured…but think how much worse it could be if the gubmint took it over!!”
This particular article, however, implies the superiority of the U.S. system by omitting to address any of the problems inherent in that system. I certainly take at your word that the CCO has never made any similar implication, but I bet it wouldn’t be hard to find an article extolling the virtues of Britain’s NHS from a left-leaning think tank either.
People need the courage to see that both systems have their problems and neither is a silver bullet solution.
An insurance company denying coverage (for whatever reason) is not the same as rationing. Rationing means it’s available, but you can’t have any of it right now, or not as much as you want. In the United Kingdom, all medical services are technically “available,” from a knee transplant to treatment for a sore throat. But in the case of certain things, maybe open heart surgery for 75-year-olds, you might be told, “You can’t have any right now. We need to target our resources and supply.” That’s rationing.
When an opening ceremony celebrates the programs of a nation rather than the values of the nation, the organizer is void of both sense and sensibilities.
And in celebrating a political agenda instead of sport.
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