I’m getting a little tired of the term “socialised
healthcare”.
I pay some attention to American media – at least, more than
the average Brit – and as I’m sure most will know, they’re having a bit of a
to-do over the so-coined “Obamacare”. As
you can probably tell, I’m understating just a tad today. Considering when I say “little tired” I mean
“frustrated” and when I say “just a tad” I mean “downplaying like Tim Henman on
a bad day”.
What I want to know is: why are they having this
debate? The US Government already
provides its citizens with basic healthcare insurance, Medicaid and Medicare,
each serving particular demographics (those in poverty and the elderly), but no
program currently exists where citizenship is the only eligibility test. Currently, and with few exceptions, most of Europe provides its citizens with some form of universal
healthcare; that is, paid for through taxation.
Even Mongolia
has a (admittedly fragile) health service.
Living in the United Kingdom for so long and taking advantage
of that wondrous part of our social system led me to be quite amazed later in
life that some countries, even in the Western world, did not have a similar
setup. Even playing Grand Theft Auto, I just assumed the deduction of about $100 every
time I accidentally blew myself up because I was spending too much time
worrying about not hitting the cars coming the other way and not enough on the
angry mob boss chasing me with a machine gun was a game mechanic to prevent
players from seeing it as a free-of-charge safety net. Now I know that if a real American gets into
a similar situation, not only will they have to pay to get stitched back
together again, but likely a whole hell of a load more than one hundred
Jeffersons.
Of course, health insurance does exist, but I’m not a fan of
the ethics of insurance as it is let alone paying a private company a few quid
every month so that I don’t have to worry if my arm falls off. Sure, I’ll worry, but only for the few
seconds up to the point that I remember, ‘No, wait… definitely paid my premiums this month. Now you
can call the ambulance.’
My point is this: healthcare provided by the government
should not be referred to as “socialised”.
Whatever the true etymology of the word in this context, it implies that
it is inherently socialist in nature, and brands itself as part of some Marxist
notion of governance. We don’t refer to
our other emergency services as “socialised policing” or “socialised fire and
rescue”, so why healthcare? What is it
about medicine that sets it apart politically from the other tax-fuelled forms
of public health and safety? Any Brit
reading this might think, “well, we do.
Numpty,” but this is more a message to Americans.
There may be a good, rational, sensible reason why this
distinction is made, but I’ve yet to hear it.
Mind you, I’m also yet to hear any decent explanation for the inclusion
of medical care in the budget, yet I’ve assumed that’s the case because the
rationale seems so blindingly apparent.
The concept of government is not to take your money: there’s a reason it
exists. It’s a beacon of what
civilisation ultimately defines itself upon, and until humanity evolves
mentally to the point where we are capable of communicating en masse and ad hoc to make informed, universal decisions we have to rely on
government as a means for this communion of leadership. And, along with the definition of government,
no matter how anarchic or libertarian you are, this includes certain
responsibilities and duties. The safety
and security of its populace is a major one, and they sometimes take this to
hyperbolic extents, especially in Europe where
we have felt the effects of socialism more pertinently following the end of the
Cold War. Take defence, for
example. We call it “defence”, but it’s really
an “offence”, based on the huge amounts of money that we pile into making sure
we can hit any location on the planet from any other point on the planet with a
first strike weapon that harnesses the power of the atom. Even the notion of something as simple as the
aircraft carrier carries connotations of an attacking capability. Which makes the British acquisition of a
supercarrier somewhat counterintuitive: why in the name of the Gods do we need
a ship capable of carrying half the Fleet Air Arm, when we have plenty of
perfectly good land-based airfields from which to deploy them? The only reason an aircraft carrier exists is
to provide a mobile platform for amphibious, international warfare. It is a relic of the Second World War that
persisted because of the possibility of a third.
Sorry, I think I intruded on a different topic (and blog)
there.
Nationalised healthcare makes as much sense as a
nationalised police force, or a nationalised fire and rescue service. The USA had a police force to some
effect (no matter how ineffective or corrupt, or both) over two hundred years
ago when libertarianism was a driving philosophy of the Old West. I find it odd that in the modern day, a poor
American might get burgled and the police will investigate for free (relatively
speaking), but if they get stabbed they have to pay for damage incurred, or
seek financial assistance from elsewhere.
I know there are plenty of charities about that help with that sort of
thing, but I take the philosophy that charities are the cogs that support a
mechanism until the manufacturer makes a new cog. By that I mean we should constantly seek to
make charities redundant: cure cancer (Macmillan and others); provide better
care for war veterans (British Legion); and even assist Third World populations
in developing infrastructure, which would hopefully eventually make them
largely self-supported within a greater trading and interactive community (a
whole bunch).
To wish for all those things is perhaps naively optimistic,
but I only say it to illustrate a point to all the conservatives saying,
“there’s the emergency room” or “plenty of charities can help them”. It’s ridiculous rhetoric of course because
charities rely on donations and they are not consistent – they can only help up
to the point that they have money coming in from the generous. But as a society, we should be being generous
anyway, by making it a part of our tax and revenue.
We provide the preventative measure for criminal activity:
the police force. In cases where the
preventative measure fails, we have the reactive: the Criminal Investigations
Department (CID). We also provide the
preventative measure for natural occurrences that can cause material damage,
and also as an extrapolation cause physical damage to the human: the fire and
rescue service. Where they fail, the
same service seeks to react.
Here in the United
Kingdom we also provide perhaps the most
important of measures for public health and safety. The National Health Service. It provides inoculations and viral treatments
and prescriptions to prevent illness, and where those fail or are irrelevant,
we have the same service to react to broken bones or disease. The whole thing seems perfectly logical.
So, right-wing America, you don’t want
nationalised healthcare? Far be it from
me, a lowly Brit, to question your obscure
liberty-but-only-where-us-holding-the-picket-sign-thinks-it-should-be political
philosophy, but if you really plan on seceding from the United States of America,
do you think it is therefore ethically consistent to maintain a tax-funded
police force and fire service?
For the Brits amongst us, I want to use this same blog as a means to demonstrate the reason why we should not be even contemplating privatising the NHS, even to minor degrees. The problem is not that healthcare costs too much - although an argument could be made that the pharmaceutical companies make it so - it is that the NHS is a bureaucratic mess. Although I try not to make it a habit of criticising Blair's government too much, they were big fans of introducing bureaucracy in the organisations it exercised control over. The NHS has suffered as a result of this. Its management is flawed, and I was making this argument before various investigations began to reveal corruption in the regional trusts. I am reminded, as I write this, of a fantastic A Bit of Fry and Laurie sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6CkltzGAxY
Good day.
For the Brits amongst us, I want to use this same blog as a means to demonstrate the reason why we should not be even contemplating privatising the NHS, even to minor degrees. The problem is not that healthcare costs too much - although an argument could be made that the pharmaceutical companies make it so - it is that the NHS is a bureaucratic mess. Although I try not to make it a habit of criticising Blair's government too much, they were big fans of introducing bureaucracy in the organisations it exercised control over. The NHS has suffered as a result of this. Its management is flawed, and I was making this argument before various investigations began to reveal corruption in the regional trusts. I am reminded, as I write this, of a fantastic A Bit of Fry and Laurie sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6CkltzGAxY
Good day.
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