At one time, I was in the camp that was absolutely against national healthcare. I'm not as opposed as I once was. Part of that is due to how hard our great private healthcare system has been hitting my budget lately. Additionally - my healthcare related tax burden doesn't seem all that different from those who live with a national system.
That's a very interesting and mature response. I can understand that people sometimes don't think through the detailed consequences of ideologically-based opinions until they actually find themselves in the relevant situation.
I recall when the "Community Charge" was about to be introduced in England. I was very much against it, and could give a raft of reasons why it was, speaking purely pragmatically, a completely brain-dead idea. My business partner was an active member of the political party which was introducing the tax, and he would agree with not a single word I said. As far as he was concerned my opposition was politically motivated, and that was that. He had a glib party-line answer for every objection, which was trite, superficial, and each one contradicted the others.
Then a little while after the tax was introduced, he started to see how it was affecting some of our staff, who were young and very mobile. The paperwork was a nightmare for the people trying to obey the law, and if they hadn't been lawabiding it was obviously all too easy to disappear. But the crunch came when his own son turned 16 (I think - whatever age an individual had to be to be liable for the flat-rate charge). He suddenly realised that he was going to have to pay for Michael, as Michael didn't have a bean to his name. Of course, the ideology he'd been spouting was all about each person paying their own share, no freeloading for the low-income.
Now the tune changed entirely. It was absolutely
iniquitous that he, as the only earner, should have to pay for three people (himself, wife and son). How did that blue-pencilled government expect him to do that? I tried to remind him that these objections were word for word what I had put to him when he was in favour, and which he had rejected. But selective amnesia won - he didn't recall his fervent support, or when he did he blamed it on "nobody realised all these consequences would happen". No, they had never been spelled out to him, not at all!
OK, he's an extreme case. But the point is he was entirely sincere at each stage. He really did believe ideologically that local government costs should be contributed to by every citizen equally, so fervently that he genuinely didn't understand the practical difficulties. It really did take personal experience of these difficulties to get it through to him. And then he just airbrushed out his original position!
I think it helps to try to put yourself in the other guy's shoes - as I'm vainly trying to do with CaptainManacles. It's too easy to believe we'll be the lucky ones who will enjoy good health, and never be out of a job and so on. And to castigate those who fall sick, or lose their jobs, as being responsible for their own misfortunes.
When I look at what healthcare can cost ordinary American families, I'm just horrified. "Co-pay", and insurance costs, and people having to grind on in jobs they hate because otherwise they lose health insurance not just for themselves but for their children - it's appalling.
Then I try to understand the attraction of that system, and I have to say CaptainManacles isn't doing a good job here, with wild talk of faceless bureaucrats that don't actually exist (at least not in the NHS, they may do in insurance companies), and some abstract notion of "choice".
I hear a lot of scaremongering about how much Americans seem to think universal healthcare would cost, and none of it makes any sense to me. I get to take home a perfectly satisfactory slice of my gross salary, thank you, and I don't think in detail about how much of the deduction goes on the NHS. (Maybe about how much of the deduction goes on the Iraq war, and the Trident replacement, but that's an argument for another thread.)
All I see is that for this I get to bother my doctor whenever I feel the need, and I get any further investigation or treatment she sees fit to refer me for, absolutely no further cost. I know that if I should develop a serious illness, maybe even one that would stop me working, one thing I don't have to worry about is how I pay for my treatment. Ditto for my family. So I declare it is the bargain of the century.
And all this leaves me with enough money to take out private health insurance if I want to (right now I don't see it as a priority, as the NHS cover is so good, but I did when I was self-employed), and in fact over the years I have also managed to save enough so that if push came to shove, I could break out those rainy-day savings and pay for a hip replacement or whatever, if I hit a bad waiting list. How much more choice do you
want, for God's sake?
Yes, I reserve the right to fulminate about NHS inefficiencies and failings all I like. I can see that improvements are needed. And that some sort of limits may have to be considered on what will be provided - for example, expensive treatments that prolong terminal illnesses by only a few weeks. But I wouldn't change it for any other system I've seen.
I'm prepared to be persuaded, but so far I just feel very, very lucky.
Rolfe.
