Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The NHS is one year older, yet none the wiser

The NHS is one year older, yet none the wiser. Having spiralled into perpetual crisis years ago, no one can pretend the gargantuan system is looking great for its age. Its fragile condition has all of us worried – not least because of the millions of lives that are forced to depend on our monopoly health service. The NHS’s woes are thought by some to be the result of some evil right-wing push towards privatisation – and by no means a reason to hold back oodles of praise for the healthcare system. If anything, the health service’s troubles have served as a call-to-arms to defend the status quo.

But despite the jabs and digs and efforts to politicise today’s landmark, most of the tweets on the #NHSBirthday feed are simply glowing, to the point that you could sub in ‘Mother Theresa’ for ‘NHS’ with ease. While every day seems to be a pro-NHS day for some, today the love is starkly on show. But these heaps of praise directly contrast what we know about the NHS.  

Far from being the ‘envy of the world’, no country has tried to emulate the NHS like-for-like. That’s not to say the principle of universal healthcare hasn’t spread – almost every country in the developed world offers 100 per cent access to care, regardless of one’s ability to pay. The main outlier is, of course, the United States, which makes the rabidly pro-NHS lobby’s comparisons to the States so poor. Using the only system you can find that doesn’t deem healthcare as a right for all citizens is plain fear-mongering, and bares no reflection on how your own system stands up to the rest of the competition.

It’s likely the ‘Yanks or Brits’ tactic is used so frequently because the UK’s neighbours put the NHS to shame.

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