Politicians Ruined a Brilliant Example of Universal Health Care | NYT Opinion
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Published 2023-12-07
And then they let you go on your merry way, without paying a penny. That’s right: $0.
If you’re living in the United States, that is probably the stuff of fantasies. But not for our cousins in Britain, thanks to one of that country’s most noble creations: the National Health Service.
It was founded in 1948 to provide free health care to all residents and has proudly stood as a much-loved symbol of British identity and the welfare state.
But for several years the N.H.S., which celebrated its 75th birthday last summer, has been suffering its own serious health crisis. Last winter was the worst period ever for the system. People died in their homes waiting for ambulances to arrive, and hospitals overflowed with patients, with some assigned beds jammed into corridors. Millions of Britons have waited months for surgeries, and some, unable to find an N.H.S. dentist, have resorted to pulling out their own teeth. After a decade of stagnant salaries, nurses and doctors have staged walkouts, adding to the crisis.
Now, as a new winter approaches, N.H.S. staff members fear that things will get even worse.
The crisis has led to calls for Britain to scrap universal health care and return to a private or hybrid health system, like in the United States and other European countries. But as the Opinion video above argues, the N.H.S.’s woes are not a function of how it’s funded but the result of something else entirely.
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All Comments (21)
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The system always wants privatization. They underfund programs, make them look shabby and then seek to privatize it.
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Most of the "privatise the NHS" pundits have no idea how much proper healthcare is. If you pay 3k a year for private you might get a wart removed or a sore throat treated. If your child has a brain tumour or you need cancer treatment 3k isn't going to pay the cost of clean bed sheets. Many of the pundits confuse the private health care plans available in the UK with a proper healthcare system. If you have anything seriously wrong with you, many of the so called private care systems don't want to know and will direct you to the NHS.
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I’m an American. I have amazing health insurance on paper. Earlier this year I ended up in the emergency room at a hospital that is in network color me shocked when I was slapped with a 3k bill which my insurance refused to pay because the doctor worked a third party doctor staffing service. 6 months later my insurance company was forced to cover the bill after my employer got involved and a report being filed with our state attorney general. Moral of the story to my Uk friends you have something worth saving so save it
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We can all thank the conservatives for "improving" this country.
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As an American - and a fairly well-off one at that, I'd warn Britain against a two-tiered health care "system" like we have in the US. For me it's OK, but expensive. For the society I live in, it stinks, leaving too many with too few benefits - and it's expensive.
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As an American, I am very jealous of UK’s NHS, especially after I was charged $1500 for a 15-min preventative ultrasound AFTER insurance payment this year. Please fight to keep it from being “privatized.” Affordable health care is a human right, don’t let greedy companies ruin your system.
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It's called the ratchet effect: do everything you can to undermine and destroy a functioning social program, then yell about how it doesn't work and the other side is to blame, then bicker about whethet yo scrap it or keep it barely functioning. It only regresses, never advances.
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I work as an NHS doctor, Brexit did not put a stop to our hiring of IMGs (international medical graduates, i.e. foreign doctors), in fact over 60% of new entry doctors in the UK this year were foreign. The number has actually increased since Brexit, Brexit had no impact on hiring doctors from e.g. India or Nigeria (where huge numbers of NHS staff originate). The NHS hires huge numbers of doctors from developing countries to make up a deficit created by thousands of doctors leaving for Australia or elsewhere, or simply quitting, because we are paid poorly to take on enormous responsibility and work excessive hours. It also does not take 15 years to become an NHS doctor, it takes that long to become a *consultant*, a large part of which is spent working as a doctor (as I am now). The UK has some of the longest training times to reach consultant (equivalent of attending) in the world, mainly because time that could have been spent training is spent doing tasks that could be done by non doctors (we call this "service provision" and includes things like phlebotomy and writing discharge summaries, and other admin work). The NHS is crap to work in since much of the savings made by its efficiency are derived from exploiting and underpaying staff, and relying on unpaid labour. Nurses in my area announced a form of industrial action a few years ago which amounted to simply taking their breaks and not doing tasks which they aren't paid to do and it was crippling.
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Healthcare is absolutely a right and should be publicly funded.
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As someone who lives in the UK, and works for and receives care from the NHS. I'm really glad this reporting is being published across the pond, and further afield, because its so sad to see the demise of such a brilliant initiative.
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So the leaders in UK really looked at the abysmal healthcare system and paltry outcomes in the US and said "good idea we should copy it here"?
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The NHS actually saved my life once at the age of 3 and that of my daughter aged 17. It's like finding the lifeboat which pulled you off a Greek or Italian cruise ship quietly rotting in some dingy estuary. Heart breaking.
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If the UK abandons UHC, it will have lost the only good thing going for it right now. Plus imagine how unaffordable healthcare would be on top of all the cost of living crisis if this were to happen?
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All I can say is that my experience of the NHS and their treatment of my ageing parents has, in general, been exemplary and that includes the last few years. No organisation, especially one of the size of the NHS is near perfect but it is something to cherish and fund. Ambulance waiting times are an issue but not unfixable. In comparison, my time in the US has shown healthcare to be something that people fear, avoid, and has a dystopian air to it when one has to go for care. I was with Kaiser and paid $1000 a month for coverage and it was still hugely problematic.
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Same story here in Canada - politicians have ruined it by freezing salary growth for nurses and keeping it difficult for immigrant healthcare workers to work with massive staff shortages
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It’s a very similar thing happening to the Canadian healthcare system. Thousands across the country can’t find GP’s, our nurses have also been striking and our waiting times have extended considerably. All because of provincial governments being run by Tories who salivate at the idea of a two tier service. It’s imperative that we across the west fight and maintain our public healthcare systems.
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Voting conservative has consequences
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What happened to the NHS? The Tories happened. They've spent the last 13 years systematically undermining and underfunding it, and privatising it by stealth. There is no reason why the NHS - which ranked as the best healthcare system in the whole world by various metrics (by the King's Fund) only 10 years ago - should so spectacularly collapse soon after Tories got their hands on it.
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The Tories have cut the NHS funding for the last 13 years, under the guise of “austerity”, raised taxes, and pocketed all the money themselves.
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Privatisation doesn't bring efficiency at all to a public service. It only punctions vital resources necessary to cover expenses but not profits to give a proportion on those funds to outside actors doing nothing essential for running the service.
