Where the Public Option is the Only Option

One of the curious things about the healthcare debate in America is how little attention has been paid to healthcare systems in other countries. You might have thought we would be hearing about how public healthcare functions in Canada and Europe. That, after all, is what we will be moving toward if the Democrats get their way. In fact, such attention is scrupulously absent from the debate, at least on the Democratic side. Conservatives have tried to bring it up, mostly without success.

Maybe that's because the story of healthcare in Europe is a very mixed bag. In the Mother Country, it's a scandal. From the London Times:

An immediate investigation to uncover the true extent of death rates across the NHS has been ordered by the Health Secretary after scandals at two hospital trusts.

Amid claims that patients are dying due to poor care in at least 27 hospitals around the country, Andy Burnham said that patient safety was paramount and must take precedence above all else.

His comments come after the head of a foundation trust in Colchester, Essex, was sacked over concerns about high death rates, leadership and waiting times.

Failings in patient care had previously been linked to the deaths of between 70 and 400 patients at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Foundation Trust, also in Essex.

Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph, is brutally clever about the NHS's brutality:

One of Labour's great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

It is a further achievement of our monitoring, regulating culture that even the monitors and the regulators don't seem to have a clue how bad things are – or they certainly didn't in Basildon. This exposes one of the great pretences of the NHS: that it is there first and foremost for the benefit of patients. It isn't. It exists these days mostly for the benefit of various trade unionists who are fully paid-up members of the Brown clientele, and who earn good money as petty bureaucrats trying to "manage" things that, if they need to be managed at all, could be far better done by fewer people in much more efficient systems.

It's not just the English government, let alone the English people, who might want to know how bad the NHS really is. Our Congress seems determined to turn the entire American healthcare system over to the HHS. Is Health and Human Services really prepared to control a sixth of the U.S. economy? Will HHS be more attentive to patients and less solicitous of public employee unions than Britain's NHS?

One thing we know about the House and Senate healthcare bills: protecting lawyers and health worker unions comes first. That might matter if, ten years of so down the road, you find yourself in a hospital bed.

Comments

[George Mason]

The lessons from countries with socialized medicine are quite clear. Liberals in
this country claim it is about compassion but, when the government is in charge
of health care compassion is the last thing delivered, and usually not at all.
In Canada, the U.K., France and Germany life has a price. That price is on a actuarial table. If you are ill your life will be priced at $X. If the cost to cure you is $X+ you will die. If it is $X- you will be given the chance to live.
The joke during the Clinton years was that "if the government runs health care it will be delivered with the efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.That is still true today. We may be on the cusp of destroying the finest health care system in the world to the benefit of less than 10% of our population. There are far more efficient methods to improve health care delivery but they require less government interference not more.

[Stephanie Hunter]

George you need to get your facts straight. The history of the public option in this country is actually quite positive. It's been serving masses, reducing costs, and staying in the black. Sorry to rain on your beat down, but the facts can't be ignored! http://cli.gs/z3AtaY/

[George Mason]

My dear Stephanie; The only reason the current public option in this country has remained viable is through cost shifting. Doctors, hospitals, etc. charge their privately insured patients (or patients who pay out of pocket) more to cover the shortfalls in reimbursements for MediCare, MediCaid and Pro Bono patients. This
is direct tax on everyone not using the "public option." Projections are that these programs (like social security) are headed for financial collapse in the
not too distance future as the population ages. If the Democrats force a public option on the general population private insurance will cease to exist (as it did for those over 65 when MediCare passed) and we will be stuck with a European type system. It however will likely be worse because the doctors will not be immune from lawsuits (the Democrats protecting their largest financial backers).You may anticipate doctors leaving the profession just as so many today are no longer accepting MediCare patients.

[KB]

I am with George Mason on this one.