Socialized Medicine: The British View
Aug. 14th, 2009 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloWe Brits love our NHS.
Many of us (including Professor Stephen Hawking) think we owe our lives to it.
Universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery- brilliant, eh? No worries about keeping up with the payments, no women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they don't have the insurance, no-one suffering or dying because they can't afford the drugs.
Sure we have our complaints: the NHS has been mismanaged, over-managed, underfunded- there are constant scandals and controversies- but no politician would dare suggest dismantling it- not even those on the far, far right. The battle for socialized medicine was won in the 1940s- and now there's no British institution- not the monarchy, not the BBC, not the "mother of parliaments"- that's more highly regarded or more firmly bedded in.
We understand you Americans are being offered a system of socialized medicine similar to ours and that some of you, instead of dancing around in your pyjamas and firing off skyrockets, are actually campaigning noisily against it. This surprises us. It fact it bewilders us. If we didn't regard you Americans as cousins we'd be going "Foreigners, eh?" and doing that thing where you hold your forefinger level with your temple and twirl it round and round.
Many of us (including Professor Stephen Hawking) think we owe our lives to it.
Universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery- brilliant, eh? No worries about keeping up with the payments, no women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they don't have the insurance, no-one suffering or dying because they can't afford the drugs.
Sure we have our complaints: the NHS has been mismanaged, over-managed, underfunded- there are constant scandals and controversies- but no politician would dare suggest dismantling it- not even those on the far, far right. The battle for socialized medicine was won in the 1940s- and now there's no British institution- not the monarchy, not the BBC, not the "mother of parliaments"- that's more highly regarded or more firmly bedded in.
We understand you Americans are being offered a system of socialized medicine similar to ours and that some of you, instead of dancing around in your pyjamas and firing off skyrockets, are actually campaigning noisily against it. This surprises us. It fact it bewilders us. If we didn't regard you Americans as cousins we'd be going "Foreigners, eh?" and doing that thing where you hold your forefinger level with your temple and twirl it round and round.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 11:08 am (UTC)I remember these things:
No culture of innovation - if somebody has a bright idea, there's no forum to evaluate and implement it.
Too much unionised demarcation - they showed a bit where the guys painting the walls had to paint round radiators because they weren't in the right union to take them off the walls to paint behind them.
The role of doctors - as I recall they are not employed directly by the NHS but are self-employed contractors. Because of their "clinical judgement" they would not recognise the authority of hospital trust managers and would bloody well do what they liked - at consultant level they seemd to have no bosses. Thus the hospitals were run for their benefit and not for the patients. This attitude is very prevalent in the British medical establishment and is a direct result of the way they are trained to be arrogant.
After 60 years, those problems are entrenched in the mindset and cause no end of inefficiencies, but there's no reason why an American system should reproduce them, they could have a universal medical system and avoid all of those issues. I hope they do.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 11:46 am (UTC)Personally, I've nothing but praise for the NHS. Our local hospital- Oldham Royal- has a proud record (it's where Steptoe "created" the first test tube baby) and it treated Ailz wonderfully when she was rushed in- some years back- with an exploding gall bladder. On the other hand, Ashton General- the flagship hospital for the authority next door- has a terrible reputation.