Equality and health care
July 8th, 2008 | by Brian T. Schwartz |Socialist politician Aneurin Bevan, father of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), has stated that “everyone should be treated alike in the matter of medical care” and that “the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged.” This is a common sentiment behind the push for politically-controlled government-run health care. But do such systems achieve this goal?
A physician wrote to Paul Hsieh at the FIRM blog:
In order to ration funds the radiology department closed the MR scanner at 5 pm even for emergencies. One evening however I was paged interpret an emergent MRI. A member of parliament had developed acute back pain and we fired up the MRI scanner and performed the study. He happened to be the head of the NDP (New Democratic Party). The NDP is the socialist party and evolved from the CCF party. The CCF party was founded by Tommy Douglas, the original creator of Medicare!
Dr. Hsieh also cites a National Post article with the following lead:
When his five-year-old daughter’s bone scan revealed a tumour that might be cancerous, the man who is now president of the Canadian Medical Association decided to jump the queue. …
He admits he himself used the system when he needed knee surgery, jumping a long queue to get the procedure done within a week by a surgeon who was also his friend.
It’s not realistic, Dr. Day believes, to expect people not to use their connections to jump the queue when their own or their family’s health is at stake.
The Guardian reports that in England,
Generally speaking, the poorer you are, and the more socially deprived your area, the worse your care and access to it is likely to be.
For more, see 20 Myths of Single-Payer Health Insurance (Myth 2).
(via FIRM)
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One Response to “Equality and health care”
By Tom West on Jul 8, 2008 | Reply
Actually, all that is required is that everyone *feel* like they are receiving the same level of health care regardless of wealth. The truth is unimportant until the point that it impacts how people view the system.
Also, allowing limited ‘jumping’ (for example via going to the USA for Canadians) acts as an escape valve to those who would prize the extra health care over equality and might otherwise be motivated to change the current system.
It is important to realize that the object of the system is not to maximize health. It is to maximize how good people feel (including those who are not sick). To that end, actual health outcomes are only one (albeit a major one) factor in the perceived success of a health care system.