I don't think so. Healthcare just isn't a politicised issue in the UK in the same way as it is in the US. If Corbyn had won you'd probably have seen a lot of objections to the massive public spending on furlough schemes and the like, but pretty much everyone in mainstream UK politics is onboard with vaccines. And there's much less of a tendency to pick a fight for the sake of picking a fight here.
Nope. My grandmother and extended family in the UK received great, high quality care as working class people for all of their lives. There have been more issues with access to care since right wingers started attacking and defunding the NHS, but hopefully Corbyn will soon put an end to all of that.
There were a few things that strike me (I'm British) as being quite relevant.
The first is that from very early on the PM was flanked by medical professionals who appeared to be apolitical and were considered by all 'sides' on the vaccine debate to be honest (even if their opinions were sometimes contentious). That credibility meant they were listened to.
The second is that the NHS is almost a religion over here - this contributes to the medical profession being extremely well trusted.
In many places in the world the frontline medical staff are trusted but the system isn't. We're lucky here in that largely both aspects retain their respect. Note that I'm not commenting on other nations health systems or their population's opinion of it. We (the UK) are not unique in having reasonable healthcare; this is more about our high perception of the system providing it.
Finally, as a society we are very compliant, and also with the not-for-profit AZ vaccine there was a certain feeling of a national champion who was also helping to save the world.
sorry, I didn't want this to turn "political" (I don't think this is the right setting), and not for one minute do I think the NHS is the be all and end all, but for someone in my position (a person with a serious medical condition) I don't think I could survive (financially and probably health-wise) in the US.
So I'm glad that I live in a country which contributes as a whole towards the nations health.
Update: LPTS says we should get political, so lets.
Sure. Most parts of the world don't have the government run the entire healthcare system. It's an obviously bad idea everywhere
To everyone except Brits.
The NHS is a sacred cow of British politics and in my experience of talking to people both online and in person, most people have absolutely no idea how it compares to alternative systems.
Very few people realise, for example, that there are very few healthcare systems in Europe organised like the NHS yet most deliver better results. However, "insurance" is a dirty word because it's associated with American Healthcare rather than continental Europe.
7 countries spend more than healthcare (% of GDP) than us, but 17 score better on the EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index) and 17 have longer life expectancies.
It's also not viable politically (debate around the NHS, that is) because the Labour party is currently being run by it's socialist faction e.g. Some of Corbyn's lieutenants are proper marxists.
tl;dr it sounds like a religion because it is a religion to most
Sure, and some political decisions have broad consensus in the US as well, e.g. Medicaid. But that really doesn't say much, because other topics are different and the NHS being broadly accepted doesn't help with collectivism vs individualism, pro/anti-EU etc.
Yes but that's not really the same thing as real nationwide public healthcare. Going by my experiences in the UK at least, people tend to have a lot of pride with them even if they also will complain about issues with it.
It's considered political suicide to even openly discuss dismantling the NHS which is why even the Tories continue to tip toe around the issue even after having been in control of government for more than a decade at this point.
The Public Option has 75% popular support. Medicare-For-All has 59% popular support. [HR] Yet we have neither. Brexit was decided on an embarrassingly close vote: 51.9%
So we have two seemingly popular things that haven't happened and one that has happened but was not so popular (but it turns out that it was more popular than was suspected by anyone beforehand). I'm afraid that is politics. If it helps, I am not a fan of Brexit but will have to live with it anyway.
There is no conspiracy and I don't think that it is fair to accuse your police and government of being arseholes (to put words in your mouth!) Sometimes we simply have to accept that our personal will does not always dovetail with that of the majority - that is how democracy works. To be fair though, there is also nothing wrong with getting a good rant in on HN.
If you feel really strongly about healthcare, why not emigrate to the UK? Our NHS is bloody amazing and only costs: https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay - roughly 12% of your salary. There is a lower band and an upper band so it is not 12% of everything you earn and it also covers unemployment payments and other things.
Look at g7 health funding by gdp for the last 40 years. The U.K. has been 10% lower than the rest (and about 1/3 - 1/2 of the US) for 40 years, Tory, labour, coalition, doesn’t matter.
I don't think the UK has ever had a government that actually wanted the NHS to fail. Even the most right wing conservatives realize they're stuck with it and that voters will be happier if it works better. They have very few levers to achieve that. Private sector involvement is one but not a very powerful one given that the NHS killed off the private health sector in the UK and ensures it can't regrow to any kind of meaningful capacity. To the extent it grew in the last few years that's only because the NHS is now in the stages of advanced collapse, failing to provide even the most basic services you'd expect and therefore for some paying twice is the only way to get healthcare at all.
I also really doubt there are many in government or politics who want a US style system. The US has a strange system replicated nowhere else (much like the UK). The way healthcare is tied to the employer there is a legacy of socialist economics during WW2. To try and stop inflation wage controls were implemented so companies started to compete via non-wage benefits, like bundled health insurance. Then for reasons I don't know it was made tax-exempt, so the tax system incentivized workers to demand healthcare through their employer instead of paying it themselves. And then legal changes and union campaigns cemented that system. Part of why US healthcare is so expensive is the sheer number of layers between the people who use it and the act of paying for it. It's very much an accident of history born in the war, and not a model to obviously replicate.
The UK system is likewise rather dysfunctional thanks to WW2. Years of wartime propaganda followed by a victory convinced Brits that the government must be very good at things, and of course this was an era in which socialist economics was taken seriously across society. So on victory the UK immediately voted in a Labor government that nationalized many industries including the entire healthcare system, with Bevan famously dividing and buying off doctors who realized it'd be a bad idea by "stuffing their mouths with gold". Governments have attempted to use the same strategy to solve its problems ever since, yet have never been able to predict or control costs in the way a business would need to. Even in its very first year, costs were double what was predicted. This is very far from the original belief that GDP improvements from the NHS would be so great it would effectively pay for itself.
people don't mind about healthcare in england, they are gambling on the probable likelyhood of staying healthy, whereas housing prices, and unemployment was out of their control under labour.
The one case where your argument fails is very serious illnesses where you can't continue to work. In the US you will end up with worse care.
And let's hope the NHS problems are temporary. When I worked in London and the US ten years ago, I always preferred the NHS because the waiting times were shorter and the quality of care was much higher. I used the NHS a few weeks ago. It wasn't horrible and I got good quality of care within a reasonable time. But it's nothing close to how good it used to be so for the serious part of my care I went to the far better hospital in Brazil covered by my employer provided insurance.
I would guess the NHS will change. Voters are unhappy with the reckless defunding of what used to be a national pride.
The US does provide better care right now if you are rich or privileged enough to have a job that is in demand. But a well funded NHS is a far better system if the political will to get back to that exists.
The NHS is pretty much like a religion in the UK, it is true. Most of us are very wedded to the idea that health care that is free at the point of use for all is a very good thing.
We are also used to people who would rather we had a more US-like health system pretending that they care about it while actually trying to make it fail, effectively to privatise health care by the back door.
So it's a hard subject to debate rationally here for sure.
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