You’ll Get Used To It
No, we do not have death panels. Yes, Ted Kennedy would have been treated over here. And Stephen Hawking is both British and still alive. (There are people here who think that he is an American, and for the same reason.) He says that he owes his life to the National Health Service. I owe mine to it, too.
America is not in the position of Britain in 1945, when the National Health Service was in all three parties’ manifestos and was therefore bound to happen, so that, even though it was very new and on the brink of bankruptcy, the Tories made no attempt to abolish it when they returned to office in 1951.
But much as happened here will happen there. Within a few years of the introduction of universal public healthcare, everyone will wonder how they ever got along without it. And within a few years of that, they will have forgotten that they ever did.
The defeat of the current proposal would not make the matter go away. It is going to keep coming back until it happens. So it might as well happen now.
Who the hell thinks like this? The politics of rolling over and, quite literally, dying.
WTF!?! Is this some kind of “post-Right” parody? I hope so.
I think universal health care is inevitable too. I wonder how much of the problem is bureaucracy. What do you think about Dr. John Muney who tried to offer unlimited office visits for a monthly fee to his patients and ended up in trouble with the state of New York?
Laying supine athwart history and screaming “YES!”
“He [Stephen Hawking] says that he owes his life to the National Health Service. I owe mine to it, too.”
A correlation is not a cause. Just because Hawking and you were treated by the NHS–which enjoys a near monopoly on healthcare (due to the fact that it doesn’t need to profit, can never go bankrupt, and thus can charge nothing)–doesn’t mean that in a free system both of you wouldn’t receive care.
Do you think that no mail would ever be delivered without the USPS, too?
Have you ever thought about any of these issues in a rational fashion?
Where did this guy come from!?!
Richard Spencer, we wouldn’t know – delivering the mail has been a government monopoly since 1660. The force which has already diluted this a bit, and wants to do so completely, is the not obviously conservative European Union.
All of these hysterical predictions were made in Britain in the Forties. The Tories even ended up voting against a Bill which they had promised to introduce, although they made no attempt to reverse it once they returned to office. But these things didn’t happen. And they won’t happen in America, either.
Of particular amusement over here is the idea that the extremely old are not treated. Have you ever been to a British surgery or hospital…? Euthansia is, so to speak, a live issue here at the moment. It certainly doesn’t already go on, at least not within the law; outside the law, it is no doubt already going on in America, too.
Abortion was not legalised until the NHS was 20 years old, and in the US you are protected from federal funding of it by the Hyde Amendment, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Carter – what have the Republicans ever done that was comparable to that, and what are they proposing now that is comparable to the Pregnant Women Support Act (effectively endorsed by President Obama at Notre Dame)? In the socialised medical heartland of Western Europe, American-style ultraliberal abortion laws are unusual, with 12 weeks as the usual time limit, and with complete bans in some places, such as Portugal.
Anyone is still perfectly free to set up a private health company in Britain. They reach a small, rich market, deep down in single figures in percentage terms. But anyway, if those clients were to collapse in the street with a heart attack, then an NHS ambulance would take them to an NHS hospital. No one can imagine life without this. Within a very few years, Americans would be just the same.
Imagine, if you will, that the government decided to introduce a “universal microwaves” program in the mid-1980s–”‘Cause every Briton deserves a piping hot TV dinner by the Telly!” The state microwaves weren’t as good as the old ones, but they were “free” (paid for through tax dollars), and thus the mid-range and cheap microwave manufacturers all went under (though there remained a small high-end market for devices that heat up caviar or something like that.) If such an abomination occurred, you’d be blogging about how there’d be no microwaves–perhaps no hot food!–without the blessed National Microwaves Service, which even the Torries are supporting these days.
If this point holds for microwaves, why would it not hold for healthcare?
It’s obvious, David, that you just like just pointing at historical facts and announcing “See! This happened! It couldn’t have been otherwise!” But perhaps if you have a moment you could google some terms like “opportunity cost” and “counterfactual.”
It’s also interesting that you argue that Europe’s complicated laws and procedures prevent abortions (or at least make them more inconvenient.) Fine. I don’t support state-sponsored abortion, but then I don’t support outlawing the practice either. And I certainly don’t support encouraging single mothers with more welfare. Needless to say, I’d be out-of-place in the Godly Socialist Britannia of your dreams.
I think David sees that we have already lost the battle over The Idea of universal medical coverage already in the public mind. However awful it will be, people see access to treatment as a human right. Is it? No. But in the face of massive social consensus to the contrary, we are very unlikely to prevail.
What’s left for us is to impede the the plans of the left long enough to create one ourselves later. Hopefully, we can create a plan that will preserve the maximum of free market autonomy and value for expenditure.
Ooops! Too many already’s.
We can leave Richard to one side. But Thomas, why on earth do you want a “free” market in healthcare? It costs you twice as much in GDP as our system does, and ours covers everyone, from, as the saying goes, the cradle to the grave. Since when were paleocons the friends of enormously big business and its political lobbyists?
Mr Lindsay, what do you think about John Schwenkler’s post on health care?
http://www.amconmag.com/schwenkler/2009/08/14/maybe-the-best-thing-ive-read-on-health-care-reform/
Can the current system create a stable health care program in the United States? It does a poor job of taking care of our vets. There aren’t enough doctors for them. There is no social security. People’s savings has been spent. I’ve seen a few articles circling around that says it is going to go into the red soon. Does social security have a future?
Libertarians believe that laissez-faire capitalism is kryptonite to big businesses.
David. I never actually said I want a free market in health care. I said I wanted to “create a plan that will preserve the maximum of free market autonomy.” It’s not a question of surrendering to “enormous big business” or government. A mixed system of some kind might preserve the ability to pick our own doctors and providers.
I recognize that the NHS is now completely established in the UK. But culturally, we Americans don’t trust systems from which we can’t opt out.
Americans are both inventive and opportunistic. This works well in many settings. Unfortunately, this also means that given a chance, we will also turn systems set up with the best intentions into rackets. Many government programs here are such rackets and frankly we have no reason to believe that a government health system would be any different.
From what I see in the British press, the NHS is failing in many ways. Your NHS may be less of your GDP, but it’s a dismally under performing system. You may be happy with The Royal mail, but our Postal Service is a joke. We came up with private sector alternatives such as UPS.
William P, on August 13th, 2009 at 11:53 am Said:
“Who the hell thinks like this? The politics of rolling over and, quite literally, dying.”
Where ‘quite literally’ means ‘not’?