Britain is currently up in arms over the comments of a conservative MEP (Member of the European Parliament) who went on American television and gave his opinion about the NHS.
The reaction has been incredible. Among other things, he has been called:
- “unpatriotic“
- a “traitor“
- worthy of losing his influence and status in the conservatives
- “not one of us” by fellow conservatives
- “dangerous“
What did Daniel Hannan say that was so outrageous?
The most striking thing about it is that you are very often just sent to the back of the queue. You turn up with a complain, an ailment, and you are told”ok, how about October of next year” or whatever it is.
We’ve lived through this mistake for 60 years now… the reality is it hasn’t worked. ….The government for a long time would always say “well, we can just make this work a little bit more if we spend more.” So the current government has almost increased by about 80% the spending on healthcare. No amount of extra spending is going to rescue it.
Yup. Hannan simply stated what I have discovered in Britain and what economists have also said - that socialised medicine is fundamentally inferior to that which is available if government is not involved.
The hospitals in my area (South West of England) are easily a step below those that I encountered in the US (in Oregon). Compared to my experience with the NHS, my healthcare in the US was cheaper and I had more freedom to chose where I went, who I saw, and what kind of insurance coverage I could get.
But more important than my own experience, is the reality of economic law.
The more control a government has, or the more it intervenes in the market (via mandates, regulations, taxes and subsidies), the less calculation can happen - and resources are squandered and wasted, and reckless shortages and surpluses begin to pile up. This is not a matter of empirical observation - it is fundamental to the way that the universe works. It will and does happen.
The question is not - is the NHS better than the US (or vica versa)? But rather, is the NHS the best way that healthcare resources can be produced and distributed? Unquestionably - the answer is “no.”
Hannan has the guts to call out the NHS for what it is - a waste of money and an unsustainable way to care for the health of British people. Everyone loses - British people get a poor care (again, than they otherwise would under a more free system) and they spend more money and waste more resources on healthcare.
The criticism against Hannan has been almost entirely ad hominem and diversionary. The substance of what he’s saying has not been addressed at all by the British media and politicians. They are simply spitting and stammering - how dare he say such a thing!
The US health system has a lot of problems, and I am not interested in defending it. And for many, the NHS has provided a good experience of care. But the fundamental economic problems remain - for every successful special interest that has been served by the NHS (and if you have benefited, you are a special interest - benefiting by the exploitation of someone else) there is a forgotten man who has paid for it - some stranger whom you have demanded the government steal from to give to you.
This is not the way a just and moral society operates.
Rather than being dismissed with name-calling, demagoguery and political posturing, Hannan’s comments should be considered weighted in the reality of economic law and experience.
I Agree. All this wet liberal anger is ignorant.
The main problem that socialism has as a concept is that if its claims were accurate it wouldn’t be necessary for it to be implemented by force (by government). Obama has recently been claiming that a “public option” wouldn’t need to be subsidized, but that it could be structured as a non-profit health cooperative. He claims such a cooperative would be lower cost (since it would be working for the interests of the beneficiaries and not profit) and that with the lower costs it could subsidize those unable to pay.
If this is true, then there is no need for this health cooperative to be government created, run, or funded. All that is needed for a structure such as is described above is for a group of humanitarian investors to loan seed money at a low interest rate to be repaid on a reasonable schedule. This group could then specify whatever rules are needed to allow all to benefit. As those in the market noticed that this group was less expensive and provided better service they would buy into it, until it controlled the health care market. This is true of any “better and cheaper” service the government might offer.
Any properly run (ie efficient) non-profit should ALWAYS be able to out-compete a commercial operation ASSUMING profit is not a mandatory motivation for an organization to be efficient. There MIGHT be a case for some costs to be paid by looting the populous (I would personally allow such for national defense), however any time a government is claiming their system will be cheaper and better by definition there is no need for government force to be utilized to implement that service. A free market will choose a better, less expensive service voluntarily if such an option exists.
The ONLY time force is required to collect fees and provide a service is if the people paying the fees don’t believe the service is sufficiently needed or if better options are provided by the open market. There are very few (if any) cases where using such force to override the purchasing decisions of the payer is legitimate.
Colin, in some ways I can agree with Hannan. However, from what I have gathered from others here in the UK, England’s NHS system is messed up because the Tories privatised some parts of it. Scotland’s NHS is going the other way–and this is after the public voted for such. Scotland has decided to not give private healthcare any tax-funded benefits, while England is moving towards a more capitalist approach. We can see this in the price of prescriptions which have increased in England from £5 to £7.20 this year alone, while in Scotland it has decreased from £5 to £4 (and is mandated to reach zero by April 2011). Scotland’s even been ambitious in ’streamlining’ healthcare to reduce the time from initial GP visit to completed surgery by a specialist in under 18 weeks by 2011 as well. If Scotland’s even remotely successful, I think this can be heavy evidence that the ’socialist’ model can work.