Committee member, token lefty, debater, hat-wearer, writer and Sharpe-fan, Ben Slingo, dispels some myths surrounding the “Obamacare” fracas.
American healthcare. Oh dear. It’s all rather unedifying, both the system and the squabble about how to make ever so slightly less dysfunctional. Certainly recent evidence suggests that US psychiatric units are shutting their doors to many hundreds of needy cases.
Enjoyable as it would be merely to revel in the hysteria, it might be useful to correct some widespread misconceptions. As ever, there are faults on both sides.
1. It is not true that the American poor are denied all healthcare. The Medicare programme does provide treatment. This treatment, however, is
a) inferior to that provided by the NHS,
b) confined largely to emergency care, excluding say consultations about worrying symptoms,
c) funded in a hugely inefficient way and
d) destined to bankrupt the system that sustains it ominously soon.
2. It is not true that the American system classically liberal or free-market oriented. Treatment is funded by insurance companies, who are in turn paid mostly by employers, who in turn offer an often very limited choice of insurance packages to their employees. The commercial relationship between patient and hospital is infinitely more tenuous than that between,consumer and supermarket. Since employers provide insurance, many American workers are unwilling to endure the disruption entailed by switching jobs, a reluctance that limits a vital condition of the free market : labour flexibility. Not only this, but precisely because the American system is privately operated many states have imposed very restrictive and expensive regulations on insurance companies and hospitals.
3. It is not true that simply because several doctors and nurses were very courteous to your ailing grandmother the NHS is a healthcare system of unrivalled quality that deserves its own religious cult (which should perhaps forthwith be declared blessed)
4. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ would impose an NHS-style system in the States. First of all ‘Obamacare’ itself is a fanciful notion as the President has (unwisely) entrusted the plan to the Democrats in Congress. Something vaguely resembling American NHS may appeal to Mr. Obama and other liberal Democrats, but they are not reckless enough to propose it given its
likely reception.
5. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ would sanction state-funded abortions (though I would imagine that some insurance premia
are already inflated by the cost of abortion). One might also note that tax revenue is most certainly spent on enforcing the death penalty, something equally repugnant to the Holy Apostolic Church.
6. It is not true that the very large discrepancy between levels of health spending in America (16 per cent of GDP) and western Europe (10-12 per cent) is entirely squandered. The very best American care is truly superb and surpasses that available on
the NHS. This care would not necessarily be threatened by ‘Obamacare’, though a government-backed insurance company would damage some of its private competitors.
7. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ envisages death panels that would exterminate the Palin family. I decline to speculate on
whether this myth has been peddled by pro- or anti-Obama partisans.
-Ben Slingo
