Thank God for the NHS

27 March 2010

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American healthcare makes our system look good, writes Ross Clark. But however revolutionary Barack Obama’s health reforms are, Americans will still pay through the nose

Had I a more devotional attachment to free-market economics I suppose I would be joining all those Republicans condemning Barack Obama’s health reforms. I have written enough about the failings of the NHS over the years to fill an entire symposium at a Washington think-tank. How tempting, then, to echo the sentiments spewing out of Fox News, predicting US bankruptcy and state-sponsored euthanasia. ‘Say no to totalitarianism,’ appealed Republican congressman Devin Nunes, not content with the charge of mere ‘socialism’ made by many of his colleagues. ‘When you turn 65, hello death panels,’ predicted Rush Limbaugh, building on an earlier threat to emigrate to Costa Rica if the reforms were passed. The reforms, ventured Jim Quinn on the Clear Channel, represent ‘the final nail in the coffin of the individual free human being. Once they own your body, they own everything.’

I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the stomach for all this stuff. In fact, a large section of the Republican party has struck me in recent days as a complete bunch of nutters. The more I read about US healthcare the more I find myself uttering words I would have thought impossible a week or two ago: thank God for the NHS.

I am not convinced by the Obama reforms. Even their supporters admit that it is going to cost US taxpayers $940 billion over the next ten years — before projected savings kick-in, if they do. It is just that no amount of free-market ideology can blind me to the obvious: that the existing US healthcare system makes the NHS — in spite of its blundering, overpaid managers and its locum GPs flown over from Germany for a nightshift — look good value for money. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, for all the choice and competition in US healthcare, Americans are being ripped off.

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