An human vs. economic perspective (The NHS vs Private Health Care)

Member Name: esthersmile

Product:	The NHS vs Private Health Care
Date:	14/11/03 (4023 review reads)
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Having read a few of the opinions on this subject, I feel I want to add my two bits. I know i've been rather prolific on this website of late, but browsing the site, I just didn't want to wait to offer this perspective on an issue which I fel is very important.

Firstly a bit of background: The idea behind the NHS is that all should have access to free healthcare. The problem is a lack of resources. So as it stands we have the conflict between a human desire to provide what many think is a basic human right and a resource-allocation dilemma about who has priority access to treatment.

As it stands, the NHS is available to evey person who is a UK citizen. It is paid for by taxation, graded according to earnings. The private healthcare system is run separately, it is significantly more expensive and is the reserve of those on a higher income.

I will now outline many of the objections to the current system, and to free and private (oops, I almost wrote privet then!) healthcare in general.

1. I've never been ill a day in my life? Why should I pay for someone else's treatment?

This is essentially a capitalist argument against the NHS. The individual would like to lower taxes so that he does not have to fund other peopl's treatment on the NHS. This may befelt particularly strongly by the rich and healthy, or by those rich people already paying for private healthcare, as they still have to pay the same amount of taxes. There's no simle answer to the question really, other than to point out that if they were to get ill, they would benefit from free healthcare, which is a risk open to everyone. It may also be useful to point out that they are being selfish, not considering what would happen to the system if everyone thouught in this way - those in greatest danger statistically are the group which is most unlikely to be able to pay for their own treatment, and should the system be changed to be more capitalis
t, these people would suffer greatly.

2. Should people who deliberatly put their lives at risk (i.e. smokers and drug takers) be forced to pay more?

This is a good idea, and one which is very appealing in theory. While we may be comfortable helping those worse off than ourselves by paying taxes, we are not willing to subsidise the life-threatening actions of others. However, when one considers the practical implications of this point of view it simply becomes unviable to act upon it in any meaningful way. For example - how do you tell if a person is smoking r drinking sufficiently to damage their health? I go out on a friday night and have a few drinks, but i wouldn't expect this to ruin my chances of free and decent healthcare, and I don't think that it should. This leads me on to another point. how are we to decide when someone deserves treatment on the NHS if we are differentiating between those "good" and "bad" members of society? If one person smokes 10 per day and gets lung canceer, should she be refused treatment, what makes her different from a 1-a-day or a 50-a-day smoker, should we make a distinction between those too? In mymind, it goes against human nature to refuse health treatment to anyone, if you are offering it at all. Aside from the practical implications, there are several philosophical difficulties which make this unappealing, not least the reluctance to "play god" with people's lives.

3. We should get rid of one or the other, having both systems is just silly.

Maybe from an ideological point of view, yes. But here is where the conflict betwen the human and economic arguments is most easily resovled. The system that we have at the moment is the one that is the most fair to all sides. The idealists are satisfied since free healthcare is available to everyone, and the richer people in the country have access to higher quality healthcare if they are prepared to pay for it
. It may seem unfair that thses people have access to higher quality care than those who are unabe to afford it, but remember that they still pay the same amount of taxes as the rest of the country, so in effect they are subsidising everyone else's healthcare, if they want to go private they are in effect paying twice, which seems to me a fair price to pay for getting preferential service - since others benefit.

4. What are the advantages and disadvatages of both systems?

Well, the advantages of the NHS are obvious, free healthcare for those who need it and can't afford to pay, a nationally regulated (and therefore safer) and organised scheme which forms a coherent whole etc. However, the advatages of a private system are that efficiency and quality are improved due to the profit incentive. There's really no way to get around this, since private schemes motivated by money are always going to do better than the cash-strapped NHS, often used as a political tool rather than what it was originaly designed for.

In conclusion then, a mixture of both private and public healthcare is probably the best way for things to be organised. While philosophical and practical problems abound with an all-encompassing free healthcare system, the thought of replacing it with a totally private one is unthinkable with the ideals we are used to in this country, and no access to private healthcare would disadvantage those who would be prepared to pay more.

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