David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said Mr Hannan was wrong in his criticism of the NHS. Daniel Hannan said: “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. We have a system where the most salient facts of it you get huge waiting lists, you have bad survival rates and you would much rather fall ill in the US.”
If you look at this post from yesterday, not that you need to as you already know fullwell, it's clear that Daniel Hannan was only speaking the truth.
Now this puts your humble blogger into a bind. I'm a paid up member of the Tories and the Tory bloggership, though wary of me as a bit left field, do see me as one of them in the end. However, my more major preoccupation is with the truth and the truth is that the NHS is $%^&*#ed. Every commenter yesterday said so, everyone I know and speak to here said so.
So, let's come back to David Cameron who himself is in a difficult position - he has a party line to uphold. A false party line which requires potential ministers and fellow MPs in general to lie to support the party line. Or was it that the problem stemmed from the comments being made whilst Dan Hannan was in America?
Are people seriously trying to say that America can't access its own material on the NHS? There's this thing, you see, called the internet. Half my readership is American and these guys ... well, let's confess it ... they're capable of talking, reading and listening and from that, horror of horrors, I actually learn about America and maybe, just maybe, they learn something about Britain. Yesterday, we all said the NHS was *&^#$%^ed. Are we being grossly disloyal to our nation bad-mouthing the NHS, on the grounds that an American might be reading our private words?
Look, not to put too fine a point on it - did Daniel Hannan breach the principle of Collective Responsibility to the Party Line? Was he disloyal to Britain? If something in Britain is totally $%*&^#$ed, should every Brit, in conversation with an American, say, "No, no, everything's fine over our way," whilst our American friend is looking at this post and seeing that it's not?
Where is the party line and where is collective responsibility when it's bleedin' obvious what the situation is? To anyone in the world.
I'd agree one needs to be loyal to one's organization when one is taking the shilling - one's firm, one's school and so on. But a country is not something you joined and signed on the dotted line to. It's something you were born or naturalized into. If you were born into it, I'd suggest you have far more right to say what you damn well like about it, wherever you are, with a view to making it right.
I've never bad-mouthed my country abroad and when I was in Russia, I never bad-mouthed Russia. But if I was pointedly asked about some aspect of that country, e.g. is it true that your NHS is not very good, then my answer might be, knowing the questioner had access to the web and can read a newspaper, "It could be better."
I suggest that that was the tone Daniel Hannan took. He strikes me as an honest sort of chap.
So where does that leave a flawed Westminster system where the important thing is not to tell the truth but to toe the party line? Surely that shows that the two party, adversarial system is seriously flawed? Surely it shows it's time to change it.
The question is - for what other system?
The trouble with the NHS is the same trouble with any monolithic state organisation. There will be good bits and there will be bad bits. It comes down to the quality of the people who run it in any given hospital. As there is no pressure of competition the bad bits are harder to improve. And the good bits don't make the headlines, the bad bits do.
ReplyDeleteI have to say in my area everyone I know who has gone into the local hospital has had some complication unrelated to their original situation while in there. Various infections, bad diagnoses, bad care. Maybe I'm unlucky, I live in a bad area. But that's the problem - the NHS gives me no choice (other than to go entirely private). If there were 2 entirely independent NHS hospitals in my area and I could choose between them then there would be a pressure on both to improve.
If you think about it, the GP network is a good model to copy. Each GP is a private business, but paid for by the State. People are free to move from GP to GP within an area if they don't like the care provided. The money follows the patient. There are enough GPs to mean that a bad one will lose all his or her patients. You hear very few complaints about the GP system. Its the hospitals that are the issue.
Hannan is a repulsive little man with an enormous limelight loving ego. It took the Rodent to sanitise his stupid views for me.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with national health systems are that they are a system. Organizations can only evolve and improve in competition with each other. All organizations that do not have serious and numerous competition are not only badly flawed, but become more so as time passes.
ReplyDeleteBecause the Founders knew this was true in all things, "public as well as private", they devised ways for government to compete within itself. Bicameral legislature, courts, ececutive, States having all power not specifically enumerated to the Federal. It took two centuries to fail through sedition and neglect.
It does not take two centuries for government health care to fail. There was never a reason it should succeed.
In liberty, things do not fail because they become rotten, but only because other things have become better. You will not have that experience as long as you have a system. Liberty is not a system.
Hannan is anything but honest as are the people who talk about competition . It is competition that has resulted in an American system that routinely allows people to die for profit & has resulted in regional monolithic private company monopolies.
ReplyDeleteBy promoting this on such 'news shows' as Glenn Beck's, Dan Hannan shows his is not one of the people we should be listening to.
The problem with competition is never too much competition, but too little. Government has its fingers in every detail of American health care. My choices are further limited each year.
ReplyDeleteBy one simple example, big Pharma is on board for Obamacare. Make you think yet? Very large companies are on board with regulation, because it reduces competition from smaller entities, and reduces new entries. They have the staffs of lawyers and others necessary to wade through regulation. It cost 900 million to get a single new drug through the federal hoops. No small company can do that.
You cannot find the right answer by asking the wrong question. This is not capitalism, it is crapitalism.
Misconception: people in America do not die for profit.
ReplyDeleteOne problem with the current plan the Congress is offering is they are trying to say they can cut Medicare in the amount of $500 billion (USD) over the next ten years, and at the same time enrollment will increase by 30%, and by some type of magic, it will not increase the deficit or raise taxes on the middle-class. That's impossible; do the math.
That's just one issue, and it seems like a lie. Seniors like myself, who have been paying into the system for the last 40 or so years will be cheated via the denial of service.
Another issue is the bill will people who are in the country illegally--about 12-20 million. This will also dramatically increase the cost of medical care here. And who pays for that?????
James,
ReplyDeleteHe might strike you as beinh honest - but at the risk of being accused that it takes one to know one, he strikes me as being a pompous sh*thead.