Like others, I was a bit put out this week to learn that I’ve spent 20 years working in an “Orwellian”, hopelessly outdated organisation which we shouldn’t wish on anyone, otherwise known as the “the NHS”.
One of the features of the NHS, apparently, is that patients have to sit in front of a “death panel” which decides whether they deserve treatment. A straw poll amongst colleagues failed to identify anyone familiar with this process, although several did comment that they quite liked the idea.
Old people, Americans are told, are routinely denied treatment as their lives are not deemed to be worth preserving. Although really it’s amazing that anyone survives long enough to reach old age under such a system, which should obviously be abolished immediately.
Of course, dismantling the NHS isn’t a new concept: New Labour thought of it quite a while ago. I’m sure it seems a perfectly sensible idea if you 1. believe everything you hear on Fox News 2. stand to make a lot of money out of private health care, and 3. are sufficiently wealthy to afford health insurance and insufficiently imaginative to conceive of ever not being.
Criticism from a country whose life expectancy is shorter and child mortality higher than our own and all for twice as much per head, reminds me of the time my mother, who’s never really got to grips with the Highway Code, offered to buy me some Advanced Driving lessons (the difference being that in Mum’s case I had to pretend to be grateful).
We, on the other hand, are very fond of criticising the American health care system, but do so from an informed position, as we’ve all watched ER and some of us have even seen Michael Moore’s “Sicko”.
Come to think of it, the American health care system features quite regularly in American films (serious Jack Nicholson fans like me will recall “As good as it gets” in which his waitress friend can’t pay her son’s medical bills). Strangely, British film makers aren’t queuing up to slag off the NHS, which may explain why American criticisms seem to be based on the fevered imaginations of right-wing republicans, someone from Fox News who once read 1984, and a few Tory MPs including one MEP living in Brussels, which is probably the nearest any of them have ever been to a British public institution.
Of course there is one area where the American system is really far superior to the NHS, and that’s enabling lots of people to make very large amounts of money out of it. The NHS is really very bad at this, and that is the real reason why many people wish to make fundamental changes to it, and why many in America are so frightened of it.
The NHS isn’t perfect, but it’s one of the best things about living in this country. So next time the Americans want to play political football (sorry, soccer) with the NHS, just lay off one of our national treasures - otherwise we might just start picking on one of theirs, if we can think of any. Anyone got some lurid stories about Mickey Mouse?
Tags: US healthcare
