Musings on American healthcare
August 21st, 2009 at 20:43
If you’re British, you’ve probably spent the last few weeks staring at the TV in something of a bewilderment as President Obama tries to push universal healthcare reforms through Congress. Bewildering because I was under the impression that universal healthcare was pretty much a settled issue – we’re all agreed that it’s a good idea. It is faintly amusing though that the argument American politicians are having we had in 1948. It’s almost as though America are 60 years behind us. Maybe this means in a few years time they’ll be an American fit enough to run a four minute mile?
The almost universal admiration of the NHS (Hannan excepted) that we’ve seen in response shouldn’t be much of a surprise though. It was created after a long, punishing war that hit the working classes the most. That may sound like there are parallels with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but it’d be most uncharitable – after all, World War II only lasted six years.
What amuses me about the whole debate going on in America though is how easily defeated the arguments of Republican and conservative opponents are. They question how the government can run something so big – but seem perfectly happy with the government running their untouchable sacred cow: the army. You’d think they’d get more worked up about the government run army – after all, it’s the army who are more likely to actually have “death panels”.
But alas, the American army is a lot like our NHS: those who criticise it are immediately the villains. Though to be fair, our army is a lot like the American healthcare system too: overworked, not really good enough, but pretty good at killing poor people.
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