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The future of medical care in the USA is what we have in Britain right now Britain’s National Health Service, so beloved by Michael Moore, is not what (most) supporters of Obama’s ‘reforms’ claim they want for the USA. They are of course lying through their teeth as a single payer system is clearly the desired endpoint (i.e. eventual de facto nationalisation) and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Well just look what you have to look forward to.
Yet as every UK politician will say when asked, the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’ and wanting to do away with it is clearly a sign of madness as the only imaginable alternate to state provided healthcare is, apparently, no healthcare at all, with anyone who is not a millionaire dying in the streets if they get ill.
Seriously, try and have a sober conversation about the NHS and the extent to which people have been propagandised will stun you.
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I’m a little puzzled what you want me to learn from this:
1. Nationalized health care leads to enforced death. I know this not to be true – my mother just passed away, having been placed on the LCP (unlike the lady mentioned, there was no doubt that my mother was dying). I was asked if that’s what I wanted to do before the doctor was even consulted on the idea, based on the experience of the senior nurse that this was an appropriate time. Had I refused my mother would have continued the standard treatment, and almost certainly lived in great pain for slightly longer.
2. Privatized health care doesn’t lead to enforced death. I worked some time ago for a religious insurance organization in the US. They were faced with a moral dilemma – a seriously ill member had exceeded the lifetime policy limit. There was no doubt that with any ‘normal’ insurer that would have been it for them; they would have had to look to their own, exhausted, finances (or the nationalized system, of course). Given their religious nature, it was decided to double the limit ‘to keep pace with changing healthcare trends’.
Neither of those, then, seems a reasonable conclusion to draw. So perhaps I’ll go with:
3. The plural of anecdote is not data. The NHS may be better or worse than the US system (in my experience it’s worse, but not terrible) but the article linked has essentially no bearing on that debate.
All tribes share a desire for totems which provide an anchor for their sense of collective identity. The problem is that such totems are by their very definition, beyond criticism. Thats why they are ideally harmless and inconsequential. Football teams and constitutional monarchs, for example, serve the need admirably.
However once you start worshipping totems that go beyond the cosmetic and play a fundamental role in shaping how your society works, then you are in very dangerous waters.
Americans are fortunate in that their primary tribal totem, the U.S Constitution is one of the finest such documents ever devised.
However what is interesting to me is that it is virtually impossible to openly disagree with the U.S Constitution and the intention of its writers.
American Democrats for example will go to torturous and absurd lengths to their hammer round socialist pegs into square constitutional holes.
What you will almost never hear from them is an argument that the constitution is flawed and the Founding Fathers got it wrong although this is an inescapable conclusion, given their political philosophy.
Instead, like religious leaders with their totemic holy books, they are forced to reinterpret it in increasingly bizarre ways to twist out their preferred meaning regardless of how far they have to depart from common sense in so doing.
Unfortunately Britain’s primary tribal totems, the NHS and the BBC are neither harmless like sports teams or or benign like the US Constitution.
Instead they poison peoples capacity to reason.
As idiotic and economically illiterate as much of the debate on health care provision has been in the United States, at least it has been a debate of sorts.
Even leftist Democrats, mistaken though they are, argue in terms of outcomes.
A debate in Britain that was about how best to organise healthcare is utterly unthinkable.
Instead politicians compete with each other to demonstrate how closedminded they are on the subject as if it were a badge of honor.
Defenders of the NHS for the most part aren’t defending it because they consider it the optimal system of healthcare provision.
Instead are jumping around the nationalized monolith in dumb worship like a pack of angry Kubrick apes.
Unlike the apes in the movie however they become progressively stupider from doing so.
Crappy health care distribution systems makes really bad objects of worship, and I really wish they could find something more harmless to prostrate themselves before.
Doctors are not perfect, and are just as likely to make decisions which in retrospect are wrong as any other professional. Improvements in this aspect of medicine are hard to measure and research, death and dying are complicated phenonema, in which sophisticated medicine sometimes has little part to play. There is little evidence that these decisions are financially driven however, as a dying 90 year old may incur a higher healthcare expenditure thru high quality end-of-life care (such as the Liverpool Pathway attempts to achieve) than in the usually inexpensive drips and antibiotics that are withdrawn. I generally appreciate the anti-statist approach to healthcare on Samizdata as one who is forced to work in the NHS! (my extreme subspecialism in lymphoma research mandates…), but straw-men arguments such as this cheapen the otherwise excellent quality of reasoning on this blog. I suppose the author isn’t perfect…
PaulH,
Granted this isn’t explicit in the article but is implicit for an articles on Samizdata. The private plan is a voluntary association that has contractural limits. The premiums are set based on likelihood of usage and the amount of exposure. In the Socialist plan inclusion isn’t voluntary and limits are set by bureaucratic decision exclusively. There is a world of difference having a policy with a $1,000,000 overall lifetime limit that happens to run out in a very small number of cases and what should be done in that case and being forced to pay for coverage through taxes to a point where using the “service” is your only option and having some bureaucrat decide you should die and you have no financial resources for an alternative.
Yes there can be anecdotes for and against, but the real issue should be which one is voluntary and which one uses Force. I am somehow against the method that strips me of my labor throughout my life and leaves me exposed to the whims of bureaucrats when I am at my weakest. Funny that way, I guess.
The thoughts arising in responses to the post and to the first two comments could take a day to properly articulate. So, I may take the liberty to generate more than one comment on this subject, with which I have been involed for many years.
Jay Thomas:
Before hand, let me suggest that history (of the Progressives – and hence of current Progessivism which Obama personifies) is indeed one of denigration of the U.S. Constitution. One has only to become familiar with the works and words of Woodrwow Wilson, as a beginning of that role against the Constitution for the Chief Executive.
Let me suggest that you, and others interested in the background for the forces in the U.S. seeking to use “Healthcare” issues as one of the bases for government through collectivism, Google or Bing, or search the Claremont Institute Site for the very fine essay of Dr. Charles Kesler; or go to “Uncommon Knowledge” on the Hoover Institute website and see & listen to the May 2009 interview with him.
The Information is so much more succinct and complete than any comment here (at least by me) could be.
The U.S. Constitution has been under constant attack since before its ratification. Afterwards, there were no coherent alternatives until Secession was attempted, which did result in some consequential operative damage. Look next at the era of Roosvelt I.
So, a major force behind what is playing out now is NOT related to the propaganda of the proponents.
Still, that propaganda may yet be demolished, or at least made less effective – so that the real objectives of the results sought can be seen, and decided upon.
More soon, perhaps
Any American who wants to know what the NHS is like should read “Notes from a hospital bed”, which describes the food (sorry, slop) served up by the NHS.
http://hospitalnotes.blogspot.com/
I didn’t know how bad was here until I read this:
U.S. Health Care Debate Feeds Anti-Americanism in Europe (Part II)
link
I despise the NHS with a passion. It is an organisation that runs entirely for the benefit of its employees, not its patients, who are at best tolerated, at worst murdered by its incompentence. My local hospital has MRSA and the chances of going in for treatment and coming out alive and in good health are slim.
I am forced by threat of imprisonment to pay taxes for it, yet have zero say in the the treatment I receive from it if I fall ill.
I pray to God my good health continues for many years yet, and fortunately I am wealthy enough to pay for private treatment should the worst happen.
I am very sorry for the poor souls who cannot afford anything else. They deserve better. But the Socialists care little for how people are treated, just that there is equality of misery.
So, you already have death panels in the UK ?
A relative of mine, a 90 year old woman, fell and broke a leg. She was hospitalized, and died some 5 weeks later. Her daughter, which sat beside her bed during most of the time was convinced that there was nothing wrong with her mother, and she died because of the treatment she received, probably over medication.
Of course, the same can happen also in private hospitals, but public ones (run by government) have a terrible reputation.
I don’t know what their reasons are behind the health care reform. When atleast half of the country doesn’t want it. You always have to remember that we have more illegals in the United States than you guys over in the United Kingdom. It plays a part because people working will have to wait longer now because there is an illegal in line in from of him with no job and never paid the taxes to put the reform into place.. It won’t work for us because of that reason alone.
Two Voices | Two Guys
ChrisCooper: The reason behind so-called ‘healthcare reform’ is the permanent takeover of the government by the Left and the stealth redistribution of income. Healthcare reform, as it is posited by the marxists in the Democrat party, is a red herring, a power grab.
Genuine reform would be narrowly targeted to the 10% of the system that needs help, while trying to do as little harm as possible to the 90% that currently works.
Instead of deliberately destroying the entire system, it would address corruption and graft and seek to reform tort law. It would also intrude less into every citizen’s life, penalize no one and place a premium on care, instead of costs. The fact that they stonewall, rush legislation and won’t discuss it on the basis of its merits and won’t be using the healthcare system themselves should tell you something.
Something that Perry De Havilland touches on that I find most interesting is the intense loyalty the British feel toward their mediocre health care system.
By way of analogy; nearly all the mainland Chinese I have met, however bright and educated they may be, are utterly unable to differentiate between themselves and the despicable regime that rules them.
For them patriotism by definition means embracing the legitimacy of the authoritarian thugs who rule over them.
Plenty of Chinese find things to criticise about their government but they don’t seriously question the basic premise that the The State=The People and that loyalty to state and loyalty to country are the same thing.
As Perry indicates, the British people are just as brainwashed on the subject of healthcare. They may moan about the reality of healthcare but it doesn’t affect their loyalty to the platonic ideal of the NHS one iota.
The same mentality endures in regard to the BBC. Here is staunch BBC Defender Christopher Bland on the flaws in his beloved state broadcaster in Standpoint magazine.
Nothing about the pitiful mediocre reality can ever dent the loyalty toward the abstract ideal which remains sacred and impervious to criticism.
When a politician says “I love the NHS/I love the BBC”
He is really saying “I love my country”
Allegiance to these rotten institutions is so inextricably linked to most Brits conception of themselves and their tribe that they are complete prisoners of it .
Jay Thomas
I wouldn’t single out the Chinese for their equation of country with government. It is usually the first argument raised when the EU is under discussion, and it is no accident the term applied to anyone opposed to the undemocratic monolithic superstate is “Europhope”. I regularly explain that I am a passionate Europhile (having lived and worked in more European countries than most EUphiles have visited), and an equally passionate EUphobe. I could save my breath because it is not what they want to hear.
Is the EU being made into another totem and thus above all criticism.
I just hope the rest of the NHS doesn’t go the way of NHS dentistry in my part of the UK. It is impossible for me to get any NHS dentistry at all, but of course I’m still paying for those who administer it to work in a big shiny office block a few miles away.
When my last dentist quit the NHS he advised me to ask the NHS Primary Care Trust to tell me about other NHS dentists in my area. I called the PCT and they referred me to their website which listed quite a few NHS dentists. I rang every one only to be told that they no longer did NHS dentistry and hadn’t done for some time. When I asked the PCT about this they explained the website had been set up years ago and is never updated. That was 5 years ago. The website has not changed yet.
pete – I’m told the way round this is to contact your MP and ask for his/her help in finding one. And yes, that is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.
Sadly things are even worse than you say Perry.
Already in the United States regulations mean that private health insurance (in most States) is more expensive than it is in Britain – and that pay-per-treatment (people should remember that as recently as the 1950’s most medical spending in the United States was directly from people’s pockets not via insurance – and it is no accident that medical spending was a much smaller percentage of income at that time) is also more expensive (again in most States) than it is in Britain.
British medical care is hardly regulation free (indeed it is vastly regulated – and, therefore, much more expensive than it need be), but most States in the United States are even worse.
For example, I am very poor yet I have private dental insurance (NHS dental care means no dental care) – I doubt I could afford private dental insurance in most Amerian States.
BUT IT GETS WORSE.
All the Bills in the House and Senate in the United States INCREASE regulations – and, therefore, will INCREASE medical costs. In vain the medical insurance companies have tried to point this out – but they have been dismissed as greedy capitalists trying to undermine Comrade Barack’s noble agenda.
Also should an employer offer comprehensive (so called “cadillac”) medical insurance to their employees – they will face (and this has been admitted) a tax of some 40%.
This will mean the death of comprehensive health insurance in the United States.
And the more limited forms of insurance will be hit by the new regulations (see above they are in all the House and Senate Bills) and so will be even more expensive than they are now (and they are very expensive now because of the vast web of regulations and subsidies that already exists).
What will this mean?
It will mean that private medical treatment (either via insurance or via direct payment) will eventually become even less common in the United States than it is in Britain (due to vast expense).
Exactly as Comrade President Barack Obama always intended.
I am now told (for example by the Journal Editorial Report yesterday on Fox News) that both the insurance companies and the drug companies have worked out they are going to be betrayed.
The insurance companies have worked out that the fines (i.e. taxes) on the young are not going to be enough to make them take out insurance (they will just pay the tax and carry on uninsured), but that the “you must insure anyone who comes to you with a preexisting condition at much the same charge as your other customers” is going to be in the final Bill.
I.E. the final Bill will bankrupt the insurance companies.
And the drug companies (the people who have spent close to a hundred million Dollars on pro Obamacare ads – plus the zillions the corporate people donated to the Obama campaign and to the Congressional lefists) have worked out that there are going to be price controls on the meds they sell – and that these controls are going to be made worse and worse over time.
In short they are sunk as well – by the very people they thought they had paid off.
As (for example) A. Clarke warned them all about this (a year ago – i.e. even before “The One” was elected) it is difficult to have any sympathy at all.
It is much like Bank of America. Only highly “educated” minds could hand out credit cards to “undocumented people” (indeed target these illegal immigrants, for that is what they are, as a market) with their fake Social Security numbers and so on – and then be surprised that they make a loss.
“But the undocumented accepted really high interest rates – but now we can not find them”. Is in much the same zone as “but we paid Obama and co so much money and he PROMISED us he would not do these things”.