I had cancer and the NHS saved my life. I'm extremely pleased to be alive, and I'm very, very grateful. But the process, it has to be said, lacked grace.At the end of her column, Ms. Patterson concludes that she still supports taxpayer-funded universal health care. But why? No explanation other than that such a system is the "hallmark of a civilised society."
I will not bore you now with the contradictory statements by consultants, or the three-hour waits for appointments that were cancelled, or the invitations to appointments for dates which had passed. I won't bore you with the lost files, and the lost X-rays, and the mammogram that turned out to be an X-ray of an ankle, or the surgeon who told me that he thought my approach to a mastectomy (which I didn't, in the end, have) was "a bit heavy". I won't bore you with the nurses who sighed and sulked and were soldered to their chairs, apart from the one who asked me, in a rare fit of bewildered humanity, why I was crying. Er, because I've got cancer and I'm still in my 30s? A teensy bit upsetting, non?
But I will tell you this. The big problem with the NHS is the people in it. Maybe they start out wanting to help their fellow human beings, to lift them, as our dear leader says, from pain to comfort, from despair to hope. Maybe they fill out a form in triplicate (two of which get lost) saying that they want to help people, and get sent off to training schools: the consultants to one where they learn to flick through a file with a sense of harried self-importance and turn to you briefly and sneer; the receptionists to one where they learn to regard the arrival of a patient as a nasty intrusion in a nice day's chatting, and one to be punished with a lengthy wait; and the nurses... It would be frivolous to mention Abu Ghraib. But tempting.
How strange that someone who had a disastrous experience with the British health system still supports such a system. Since she compared -- or almost compared -- the British health system to Abu Ghraib, I'll invoke Stockholm Syndrome as the explanation. If all one has ever known is government care, one sympathizes with even bad government care.
The bigger take-away is that there are problems in certain communities in the U.S. with health care delivery, which can be remedied with focused efforts within the existing health care system; but there is a systemic problem in Britain which is not amenable to remedy because the entire system is the problem.
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It's an interesting analogy. Abu Ghraib holds terrorists, the NHS employs them.
ReplyDeleteAny system that robs Peter to give to Paul can always count on the support of Paul. The reason why she continues to support the system is because she honestly believes that if people weren't forced to help her, she'd be dead. They simply do not believe in freedom.
ReplyDeleteProf. Jacobsen, your posts are always thoughtful. But you usually when into problems when you try explain something away, an inconsistency, a crazy remark "death panel", etc... any health care plan is subject to human foibles, including laziness, mistakes, non-caring attitudes, etc.. But the LA and other low served communities are systemic problems, not "remedied" by more programs or a "focused" effort. What focused effort? Both Britain’s and USA problems are systemic in nature. Your posts would be more relevant if you discard the summaries and explanations and excuses
ReplyDeleteSorry, Michael, but the "low-served" community's problems are not a medical insurance or medical care problem but a problem with enforcing illegal immigration. If persons of illegal status were treated at the emergency rooms but then deported and the border enforced, you would see a great improvement in our medical system. Not to mention more of our taxpayer's dollars in the government coffers if the money was then not being spent on more medical and welfare for the illegals. No, the problem is not with the medical community or insurance community at all. It is elsewhere entirely. This "medical care for all" debate is a straw dog for the fact that the Democrats want 20 million new voters.
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