Advocates of Obamacare often point to Great Britain’s National Health Service as an example of a national health care system that works. But all is not rosy across the pond, as England is beginning to ration treatments for “non-urgent” conditions such as hip replacements, cataract surgery and tonsil removal in order to save money for the National Health Service. Unfortunately, under current law, Obamacare could lead to a health care system similarly plagued by long waits and reduced access to services.
To understand the dangers of a government takeover of health care, America should study Britain’s system, which exemplifies the shortcomings of heavily regulated, nationalized health care. A recent report by Robin Harris of the Heritage Foundation outlines the deterioration of Britain’s health care system due to years of liberal health policy marked by heavy concentration of power, higher taxes and the proliferation of rules and restrictions by the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is Britain’s government-run health care system. It acts as a single-payer system which originated with the …
The 2010 edition of the Index of Economic Freedom poses a frightening paradox. Around the world, the economically freest countries are, by and large, those with a British legacy. Indeed, the top five – Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland – were either founded or influenced by the British. Of the top ten states, only Denmark, Switzerland, and Chile were not, at one point, governed from London. The lesson should be clear: economic freedom, born of the thought of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, spread round the world …
As US legislators continue to advance the largest expansion of government control over health care in the US, many Americans may need some comic relief. Although such massive consolidation of federal control over health care is by no means a laughing matter, the following 2-minute clip from a popular BBC Documentary Series “Yes, Minister” illustrates the ridiculousness of the efforts.
The Telegraph reports: Family told by NHS: Alzheimer’s is not a ‘health condition’ NHS Worcestershire ruled that Judith Roe, 74, did not qualify for NHS funding because her condition was a “social” rather than “health” problem, even though she was so ill she could not make a cup of tea and regularly left the stove on. She was forced to sell her £200,000 home to pay her £600-a-week nursing home fees, which would have been funded if she had been categorised correctly.
It’s another day, another failure, for Britain’s National Health Service. America has some prominent congressional advocates of a “single payer” system of national health insurance run by the government. They always promise high quality care at low cost. But, in fact, it always comes at a high price. Britons who get sick, and have to try to live through it, pay for it at a steep personal cost to themselves and their families. The report of conditions in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in yesterday’s Times makes for grim …
Britain’s National Health Service is under fire, again, this time for the hideous conditions in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust that killed between 400 and 1200 patients in a three year period. As always, bad news encourages others to come forward. An anonymous NHS doctor has just leaked [1] the flow-chart he is supposed to use to answer the simple question “Do you smoke?” It is incomprehensibly complex. But it’s worse than that. The failures in Mid Staffordshire occurred because institution’s managers were so obsessed by meeting centralized targets …
