Socialized Medicine: The British View

[poliphilo]

We 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.

Comments

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I've also seen the Dutch rules around Euthanasia put forward as evidence of socialist European death panels. Which misses the point, of course. (I *do* have some questions around how it is applied here but this does not have anything to do with rationing.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

At present Brits who want "assisted suicide" have to go to Switzerland to get it. This is allegedly illegal, but no-one has yet been prosecuted as an accomplice.

I don't have very clear views on the issue myself, but I'm glad that we're having the debate.