Don't Import Britain's Healthcare Missteps

For many on the left, the endgame for American healthcare is a system similar to Britain's National Health Service.

I appreciate Mr. Lehrer’s comments but I must beg to differ with his characterization of the desires of President Obama or “anyone else on the American left” (a very large cohort, indeed) with respect to a healthcare system. There are many who would like an American system in which the government provided healthcare.

Check out the VA system as a model and Phillip Longman’s advocacy of it as one example.  For those who think this is a good idea, I would refer you to this rebuttal.

I have no doubt that President Obama would, at this point, vigorously deny his previous position in support of such a system, but I suspect there’s a political component to his new point of view. I do believe that for many, the endgame for American healthcare is indeed a form of the National Health Service now being abandoned by the British. Understanding the failures of that system is vital.

I would also point out the definition of a single payer system according to the progressive organization, Health Care Now, which numbers among its Board of Directors, Dr. David Himmelstein, Co-Founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, Harvard Medical School. In their view, a single payer system is characterized as follows (from that organization’s literature):

Single-payer is a term used to describe a type of financing system. It refers to one entity acting as administrator, or “payer.” In the case of healthcare, a single-payer system would be setup such that one entity—a government run organization—would collect all healthcare fees, and pay out all healthcare costs (their emphasis).

I am not sure how Mr. Lehrer defines a single payer system but clearly he and Health Care Now are not on the same page if he thinks the British system is something other than single payer.  The important distinction is whether there is a multipayer, independent delivery system or whether there is a single payer plan with the government the controller of a nation’s healthcare system.

I would also disagree with his dismissal of market type reforms in both the UK and even Canada. If one wants a colonoscopy performed with a one to two week wait, a patient in Toronto can visit the Cleveland Clinic outpatient facility in Toronto and pay a hefty fee for the opportunity. To attend a Canadian “private delivery system”, a government reimbursed site, there is a six month wait.

If the head of the British National Health Service invokes Joseph Schumpeter in describing the newly proposed British model, I would argue that market forces are being injected into their system.

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