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发帖数: 29846 | 1 As Obama pushes new regulations, UK eyes privatizing its health care
ilmmaker Michael Moore glorified the United Kingdom’s National Health
Service in his 2007 documentary ”Sicko,” making a cult film argument that
socialized medicine works. But Prime Minister David Cameron, the Tory MP who
heads a coalition government in England, is apparently not a Moore fan: He
is working to partially privatize the NHS, beginning a massive outsourcing
of medical services to private health care providers throughout the U.K.
Britain’s media, in particular the Washington Post–Huffington Post hybrid
The Guardian, is publishing near-panic-attacks alerts daily about the
conservative plan, which comes as the British government scales back on
entitlement spending, hoping to avoid a Greek-style financial meltdown.
But in the United States, left-wing enthusiasts of socialized medicine don’
t seem bothered at the loss of a role model. Many won’t even acknowledge it.
“I handle media and public relations for the Catholic Health Association,”
Fred Caesar told The Daily Caller. “We will pass on commenting.” Caesar
is special assistant to the president of the CHA, a vocal advocate of
President Obama’s health care overhaul.
Major U.S. media are also ignoring the story. As Cameron’s own health
reform bill gathers momentum and heads for a vote in Parliament, online
searches show no coverage at all of Britain’s move in The Washington Post
or The New York Times.
‘Taken out and shot’
Contrast this with U.K. media, which is pressuring Cameron to drop his plans
. Major medical societies — including the Royal College of General
Practitioners — and the rest of Britain’s medical establishment is
shouting for Cameron to cease and desist.
The British public has a fear of privatization founded on the idea that
doctors “might become dependent on advice from powerful private health
companies,” and that the free-market competition laws could replace “
public service principles” as the NHS’s central operating principle, The
Guardian reported this week. (RELATED: Full coverage of the US Affordable
Care Act)
Even the Times of London, a liberal broadsheet that is still normally
restrained in its commentary, opined that Cameron’s health secretary Andrew
Lansley should be “taken out and shot” for moving the bill through the
House of Commons.
Sally Pipes, an American health policy expert who leads the Pacific Research
Institute in San Francisco, told TheDC that President Barack Obama, Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will
likely ignore any changes in U.K. health policy. Their allies in the U.S.
media and public policy establishment, she said, would follow suit.
“They are ideologues,” Pipes said. “They don’t care whether the system
really works or not. They have an ideological goal in mind.”
Pipes notes that the system of socialized medicine in the U.K., and a
similar one in Canada, is viable only for routine visits to the doctor, but
not for chronic illnesses like cancer or kidney disease. A few years ago in
Canada, she said, her own mother could not get a simple colonoscopy
scheduled for several months, despite searing abdominal pain.
When Pipes’ mother started bleeding, she was rushed to the emergency room
and finally given the colonoscopy — which indicated that she had colorectal
cancer. It was too late for treatment at that point, though, and she died
shortly thereafter.
“They keep down costs by rationing medicine and medical services,” Pipes
explained.
Joseph A. Morris, a former Reagan White House lawyer who now serves on the
board of the American Conservative Union, told TheDC that socialized
medicine has turned out to be a threat to Britons’ health, and to their
economy as well.
“Europe’s message to the world is no longer that the socialist dream of
the cradle-to-grave welfare state is an easy achievement,” Morris said. “
Rather, it is the shouted warning that it is a fool’s paradise. The bills
are coming due and the only real alternatives — serious financial reform of
government or national bankruptcy — are not pleasant.”
Morris added that the British government, “unlike the Obama administration,
is hearing the warnings, identifying its greatest vulnerabilities, and
trying to race ahead of the deluge.”
Obama’s solution for the health care industry, the controversial Affordable
Care Act, has already been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts and is
headed for a Supreme Court showdown this spring. Given the timing, it has
been a consistent presidential campaign issue.
Last week former Sen. Rick Santorum, who was among the earliest advocates of
private health savings accounts when he served in Congress, aimed a health-
care jab at his main GOP rival, former Gov. Mitt Romney.
“Gov. Romney is dead wrong on the issue of the day and he should not be the
nominee of the party,” Santorum said in a campaign stop in Minnesota near
the Mayo Clinic. Repealing the Obama health care plan is “central to our
country,” Santorum told a cheering crowd, and “central to this race —
specifically why Gov. Romney is absolutely incapable of making the case
against Obamacare successfully.”
As the White House’s model for health reform hits roadblock after roadblock
, a Gallup poll released Wednesday shows that small business owners are
losing confidence in Obama’s plan. Forty-eight percent point to potential
health care costs and another 46 percent point to government regulations as
reasons to abandon the president’s agenda.
Even if Britain’s NHS and other state-run health systems were replaced with
something more capitalistic, other socialist models can be found on any
world map for future U.S. policy experiments.
“Cuba has recently allowed some private elements into their health care
system,” said Pipes. “But North Korea is still completely state run.” |
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