State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
In my book Welcome To Obamaland - which, you know, you should give someone you love for Christmas because it's the best thing I've ever written and it's also funny and true and probably the best primer for a young conservative you could possibly get - there's a chapter called The Envy Of The World in which I riff on the horrors of state-rationed healthcare.
The chapter title is ironic. Only by the British is the National Health Service viewed in this rose-tinted way. Everyone else recognizes it as a joke. Unless, of course, they're one of the thousands of health tourists who fly in every year from places like Nigeria to take advantage of our largesse in doling out free heart bypasses, and such like.
But I digress. I wanted to show you an example of the curious mix of misplaced nostalgia, Oliver-Twist-begging-for-more-rancid-gruel supplication, knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and sheer ruddy ignorance which characterize the British view of the NHS.
This from an article in the Independent in which a journalist sings the praises of her recent experiences with the NHS:
If you think the Coalition is being inflexible over public-sector pensions, that's nothing compared with the rigidity of the ankle boot that broke my left leg in three places last week. I'd never spent time in hospital beyond visiting hours before, so I had no idea what to expect. But I'm writing this from home, encased thigh-high in fibreglass, so something must have gone right.
In fact, I was impressed, relieved and reduced to tears at times by the sturdy resilience of the NHS, the flexibility and pragmatism of which has something to teach the Coalition and bootmakers alike.
In all, I met about 12 different doctors during my five-day stay, talking to each of them once; there was no pater figure who oversaw my case from crack to crutches. I hadn't a clue what was going to happen next, but they did. Bewildering and frustrating as it was, I realise now that the system doesn't have time for the personal care one might expect – this comes from the nurses and healthcare assistants rather than from on high. You just have to trust the experts.
There were delays (I waited two days for an operation) and mistakes (A&E missed one of the fractures), but here I am, with an impressive seven-inch rod in my calf to hold everything together forever.
People complain about sloppiness in healthcare. I can only say thank God I don't live in America. It doesn't seem fair to examine the NHS with the usual microscope of customer satisfaction, because it isn't something you pick out like a decorative cushion. It's something you don't think about until you need it. And when you need it, you really need it.
There were dark moments: the sociopathic nurse who left me drugged and crying in the dark, placed my handbag on my chest and told me to phone my mum; that same Nightingale told my neighbour she was sick of her and would rather be "down the pub". But that was one person – and she was outnumbered by abusive patients.
Hospitals are not very nice places; any sense of comfort comes from bittersweet poignancy and selflessness. I wouldn't choose to spend time in one, but I'm grateful some people do. We're all as sick of waiting lists and bureaucracy as I was of seeing Andrew Lansley's face on my pay-per-view television every day. But the NHS has become so political a topic that we've forgotten the human brilliance of it. I was broken and now I am fixed. Yes, it costs a lot of money but it also requires something that is free: trust.
Gee Americans: aren't you just feeling SO jealous that you don't have a health service where they delay your operation for two days, miss one of the three fractures in your leg and the nurses leave you drugged and crying in the dark while they tell you how they'd rather be down the pub? Why, you're the kind of litigious troublemakers who - rather than be grateful for all this - would seek to sue the pants off this temple of healing.
- Comment (26)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Feb '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Maybe she was being facetious. As I am now.
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
The Independent is most definitely NOT a facetious newspaper. (Though it might well be a joke newspaper)
Sep '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
"I can only say thank God I don't live in America." Because in that terrible land of injustice, a person with three fractures and no insurance would just be left to rot on the sidewalk, right?
I'm not sure which is more horrible--the NHS, or this hack from the Independent. The writing reminds me of press releases from the Soviet Union, singing the praises of the all-encompassing State. This is what we can look forward to under Obamacare--awful service and a press corps that keeps telling us how wonderful it is.
Sep '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
I followed the link and saw this at the bottom of the column: "Comments for this page are closed." Can't have the hoi polloi writing their own impressions of the NHS, can we?
Mar '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Since it is hard to tell the difference between a doctor who won't tell you anything and a doctor that doesn't know anything, and sociopathic nurses make me uneasy, her equanimity is impressive -- bizarre and dissociative, but impressive.
All that and they managed to misdiagnose a broken leg? Hopefully they got the right leg. Messing that up would have been embarrassing.
When all our health care is provided by the government, this will be one of the success stories. So cheer up, America! Or else Nurse Cruella will be in here with something to keep you calm.
Mar '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Sorry for not bearing directly toward your current thesis, James, but I just finished the second installment of your UK appearance and am thoroughly enjoying the conversation you and Peter had. You strike me as the sort of intellectual who manages to put his book down to think for a spell before raising it again, which is not as common a quality as one might assume--I suppose one could call it practical gravitas.
To your current point, as a Briton who lives amidst the ruins of a once great society now watching the States turn its guns on itself, you must feel as I do when I watch young men do something singularly stupid--something I did when I was young--compelled to speak, but helpless to effect the outcome.
Edited on Dec 13, 2011 at 4:57amSep '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
We're right behind you James, here in Canada. The popular view amongst the lack of intelligentsia here is that in the US, a gang of hell's grannies descend on you as soon as you enter the hospital to ask you for a USD $1.0 Million dollar cash deposit -- assuming you weren't driven over by the ambulance and left dying in the street as you were shot to death by roving gangs of bitter clinger Rethuglicans with dollar bills hanging out of their suits on their way to a Fannie Mae Freddie Apple Mac consulting gig. Once admitted, you will be given shrimp salad, expensive cabernet, naked dancing girls (unless you're female), thousands of dollars of expensive, unnecessary tests and then sent on your way to merrily contract with Jim the Hammer Shapiro to sue the hospital for malpractice. Not for any definable reason, of course. Just because you can.
That's the Stalinesque view your correspondent friend holds of US healthcare, so, in his mind, a few sociopathic nurses loose on the ward is a small price to pay compared to the unrepentant barbarism of Uncle Satan and his feckless minions.
May '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Mr. Delingpole,
Your post and the article raise an interesting question. Where in god's name do the people in Great Britian get their ideas about how bad things are in healthcare in the US. I have a thick file of NHS and Canadian Health service horror stories from the news that I keep and I give copies of to folks who tell me that socialized medicine is so great. So, I get my impression of the UK and Canadian systems from those and from folks like you.
Where do folks in Great Britian get the idea that there are hoards of uninsured dying in our streets and that if you don't have a sack of money, you can't get into a hospital?
Sep '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
I have a thick file of NHS and Canadian Health service horror stories from the news that I keep and I give copies of to folks who tell me that socialized medicine is so great.
They get it from the state run broadcasters (BBC and CBC) and some of the Culture of Death Star's Vaderesque droids.
May '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Another reason that most people retain a good opinion of the NHS is that it remains pretty good at acute care - if you have a serious injury, or catastrophic illness, the systems are designed to give priority (the endless robotic triage is one of the main reasons for long waits in A&E), and by-and-large, they work.
General practice remains pseudo-independent (though colossally regulated), and there are some first rate doctors still in General Practice.
Nursing care is a tragic tale (not to damn all individuals, of course), and it is this that particularly makes long-term care such a horror. My late mother spent a number of months on an NHS stroke ward - the nursing was negligible, and my cousin's husband (head of rehabilitation at the Academic Hospital in Amsterdam) rated their rehabilitation as 30 years out-of date.
But don't get complacent - it isn't just state ownership. Allow "professionalisation" of Nursing, with a degree required to enter the profession, and you can get care as crappy as ours, too.
Jan '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
No, seriously, the Independent article has to be satire.
Oct '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
James, is there any way you could contact this woman and ask her to describe how she thinks it would have gone in America? Her report of how "wonderful" her experience was just made my skin crawl. I'd really like to understand what she thinks would be a worse one.
Oct '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
David Knights: Mr. Delingpole
Where do folks in Great Britian get the idea that there are hoards of uninsured dying in our streets and that if you don't have a sack of money, you can't get into a hospital? · Dec 13 at 5:39am
My parents are from Scotland and I travel there often. The people there are under the impression that you can be standing outside the emergency room door and your entrance will be blocked unless you have insurance.
I have twice stood in an emergency room holding a child with a potentially life-threatening problem (spinal menangitis with one, anaphylactic shock with another) and no one even asked my name before treatment was rendered. My gasping-for-breath son was literally ripped from my arms.
I have told the stories to my relatives, told them about acquaintances without insurance and the care they get, and it makes no difference.
My own mother, who has lived here for 60 years, thinks she has survived our health care system only by the grace of God, her own personal experiences notwithstanding.
Jul '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Ahhh the marvelous Brits and the NHS. If expectations are the cornerstone of disappointment then my former masters across the pond have the answer. Nurse diesel, misdiagnosis, and delays notwithstanding it was wonderful to be high on narcotics for a few days.
Annefy, I am glad your kids were cared for well. ER staff do not care one whit about insurance status or finances. The massive inflated costs of US healthcare is a different topic but denying care is not something practiced or preached here.....yet.
May '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Health Care comparisons with other countries are always dangerous. People like to point to things like life span and infant mortality. Only the United States truthfully reports its infant mortality rate.
Mar '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
David Knights:
Where do folks in Great Britian get the idea that there are hoards of uninsured dying in our streets and that if you don't have a sack of money, you can't get into a hospital?
Probably from listening to Mr Obama - was it his mother or aunt who was almost left for dead in the street? I forget.
Actually, this view is commonplace in the UK - even I had it before I moved to the US. Of course when I arrived I found that I had private insurance, so it's not a problem.
It's true that there are some people who fall through the cracks here, so there is room for improvement, but Obamacare is not the solution.
As others have mentioned, the primary care and acute care are pretty good in the UK, but if you do end up in hospital there is a good chance you won't make it out alive. And if you have a chronic condition, it's pretty hopeless, too.
Btw, James, I am enjoying your interview with Peter - I listen on the podcast version.
May '10
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
I sympathise, but these sorts of discussion tend to be so content free (outside Ricochet, naturally), that it is safer to say that no health benchmarks can be compared without more information. It wouldn't be unfair to say that only the US reports infant mortality truthfully *against the US definitions* - which are very wide ranging. Some definitions massage the figures. Others try to capture different information. If the data are gathered to understand the quality of neonatal care after childbirth at term, the US definition will be unhelpful. In the free world, statistics are generally gathered to drive improvement, and not to establish moral credentials - so they will be truthful - for the purposes for which they were gathered. Cuba, by comparison, is another matter ...
Jul '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
Somehow I expect crack babies get a touch better treatment in our neonatal centers than elsewhere.
Oct '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
After many discussions with my Scottish mother, I have reached an unfortunate conclusion. Bear in mind my father suffered from a weird almost-unheard of disease from the age of 35 to his death at 84. He got outstanding care. He died two years ago from cancer, the weeks between diagnosis and his passing were a medical wonder. My mother has a few issues and has no complaints about the care she's received.
My conclusion? She has a sneaking suspicion that someone out there is getting BETTER medical care than she. And that's unacceptable. Obamacare, to her, is the answer, because everyone will be at the same level. How low the level is irrelevant to her.
Apr '11
Re: State rationed healthcare: the envy of the world!
If I recall properly, the common reassurance among Soviets was that even though things were tough in the U.S.S.R., they could take comfort that they were still better off than those in the U.S.A. It was only when things became more open in that nation did their eyes start to open.
Essentially, that's what happens with health care service comparisons. So many only know 'it may seem bad here, but it's worse over there'.