As the NHS Continues to Crumble
Americans Should Be Dismayed, Too
I’m sorry the NHS is struggling.
I’m an American who has benefitted from healthcare abroad on more than one occasion. As long as twenty years ago, I would come home from another nomadic journey abroad and tell my friends and relatives about the healthcare systems in Spain, England, Malta, Germany, Ireland, and Canada.
Back then, nobody really cared.
They kind of listened with wide eyes but they didn’t get it nor were they particularly interested in exploring the topic with me. Complacency, a belief in the superiority of the US, and an almost total lack of knowledge about what life was like in other countries kept Americans blissfully ignorant.
That ignorance has been to our own detriment, but who’s really keeping track.
To this day, even my progressive friends have little to no knowledge about how the various healthcare systems work outside the US. They make all-inclusive statements about everyone else in the world enjoying affordable healthcare but aren’t particularly aware that each country has a uniquely designed system.
They can only make limited comparisons or suggestions as to what might work for us. And only in the most general terms are we able to relay information to the solidly determined Republicans that use the scary term socialism as a counter argument. They have even less of an understanding of their favorite argument against ending our predatory health care system.
Unfortunately, lack of knowledge has never stopped Americans from having opinions.
For quite a few years Republicans have used Venezuela as the best example of a failed socialist country. As if an improved healthcare system that doesn’t regularly send people into bankruptcy guarantees that all we’d have to look forward to is becoming just like Venezuela.
And let’s be honest, the slightly more ardent push in America for Medicare for all or any other kind of universal healthcare has been quite recent.
Based on our approach to providing healthcare, we haven’t yet experienced a true progressive movement. The NHS was formed in 1948, 75 years ago. We’re talking almost a century of watching other countries develop their own model of national healthcare to cover the health needs of every citizen with almost no progress made on behalf of our own citizens.
We’re so late to the party that it ain’t funny.
We think we’ve accomplished something monumental when we did away with the precondition clause from our health insurance policies. Whoopee! Finally, we made it mandatory to cover sick people. I thought that was the reason for healthcare insurance.
But what does all of the above have to do with the NHS?
I can almost guarantee you that if healthcare continues to be a hot topic in the next election, Republicans will be citing the NHS and its colossal failings as a dire warning to Americans. The very place where this progressive idea was born and developed is collapsing. What more do we need to know? They’ll gleefully announce that socialism is doomed and always has been.
The talking heads will be delirious with unbridled satisfaction.
No Republican will take an honest look at why the NHS is failing. They’ll quote the standard old Reagan mantra — that the government is the problem. They’ll blame government for being the source of the problem when in fact it’s the Republican party itself that’s plotting against any social system that benefits the common good.
They’ve been relentlessly pushing for all government programs to fail, so they can then privatize everything.
Our publics schools, USPS, national parks, social security, Medicare, building of roads and bridges, you name it, are all on the docket to privatize if possible. They underfund and demonize the very systems that once defined a first world country. As the middle class shrinks and those at the top profit, we slowly but surely begin to lose our quality of life. It shouldn’t be a mystery to Joe Blow and Maggie America, but unfortunately, they don’t seem to comprehend that they’re being robbed. Little by little, the unprecedented social progress of the last century will disappear.
Once it’s gone, who knows if we’ll ever get it back.
I’m not a Brit, but for those Brits who are mourning the slow death of the NHS, I mourn with you. There was always only a slim chance that one day, the US would create a health care system that wasn’t 10 times more expensive than any other country in the world. Sadly, your failure to keep the NHS thriving not only hurts you but ultimately threatens any hope that I have for a solution to our predatory system.
You’ll become us instead, and we’ll both be doomed.
Teresa is an author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
