Britain’s Health Service: A Cautionary Tale

Crisis, or at least uproar, threatens to overwhelm Britain’s National Health Service. Justifiable concern has been exaggerated by the media, by the Conservative government’s political enemies, and by doctors’ and nurses’ organizations into something like hysteria. Dramatic headlines (“Health Service on Verge of Collapse, Say Top Doctors”), angry feature articles, and tear-jerking television programs have been appearing literally every day. Babies waiting for postponed hole-in-the-heart operations have been paraded in front of the cameras. Nurses, urged on by politicized unions, have engaged in 24-hour strikes, not only in pursuit of more money for themselves and for the Health Service generally, but against the privatization of hospital cleaning and catering services. Delegations of doctors have lobbied the government: and the Labour Party, scenting blood, has eagerly adopted their cause.

Columns of letters to the press condemn the government’s heartlessness in imposing “cash-limited budgets” (as though there could be any other kind) on caring doctors and nurses. Opinion polls declare overwhelmingly that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should use any surplus cash for the Health Service rather than for tax cuts. (Who would be so selfish as to give a pollster the opposite answer?) In a typical radio program, doctors, nurses, patients, trade unionists, and an opposition spokesman were interviewed, with, for balance, a member of the government protesting that a lot more money was already being spent on the Health Service. There was no one to speak in favor of lower taxes.

Crisis, or at least uproar, threatens to overwhelm Britain’s National Health Service. Justifiable concern has been exaggerated by the media, by the Conservative government’s political enemies, and by doctors’ and nurses’ organizations into something like hysteria. Dramatic headlines (“Health Service on Verge of Collapse, Say Top Doctors”), angry feature articles, and tear-jerking television programs have been appearing literally every day. Babies waiting for postponed hole-in-the-heart operations have been paraded in front of the cameras. Nurses, urged on by politicized unions, have engaged in 24-hour strikes, not only in pursuit of more money for themselves and for the Health Service generally, but against the privatization of hospital cleaning and catering services. Delegations of doctors have lobbied the government: and the Labour Party, scenting blood, has eagerly adopted their cause.

Columns of letters to the press condemn the government’s heartlessness in imposing “cash-limited budgets” (as though there could be any other kind) on caring doctors and nurses. Opinion polls declare overwhelmingly that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should use any surplus cash for the Health Service rather than for tax cuts. (Who would be so selfish as to give a pollster the opposite answer?) In a typical radio program, doctors, nurses, patients, trade unionists, and an opposition spokesman were interviewed, with, for balance, a member of the government protesting that a lot more money was already being spent on the Health Service. There was no one to speak in favor of lower taxes.