RANT: TO PUBLIC OR NOT TO PUBLIC THAT IS THE QUESTION

 

 

I WATCHED AN INTERESTING VID ABOUT the British National Health Service (NHS), that gave a brief but informative history of the famous social program from its inception and implementation in the 1940s and 50s to its current struggle against privatization and corporate capture today. Bob Gill, a physician with decades of experience in medicine, co-wrote “The Great NHS Heist”, and the vid* is disturbing to those of us favouring a universally accessible, publicly funded healthcare system in our countries.  

The NHS is the ‘mothership’ of most modern, healthcare systems in the developed world, and has long been a bellwether of trends and developments in the field. Gill’s vid shows us the growth of the program from its earliest days and how, by the 1940s, planners had begun envisioning a broadly-based system of health care provision that would serve the needs of entire population of post-war Britain. And I think it’s safe to say that the British health care system, for decades, has admirably served its public and acted as a model for medical care across the globe.

However, Bob Gill, along with many other watchers in the field, have seen how the once proudly public aspect of the NHS has been eroded over time by the encroachment of private capital and corporate interests. I was interested to learn that the spectre of corporate capture and privatization in British healthcare has been decades in the making. In the Thatcher years of the 1970s and 80s, and especially the years of the Blair/Brown (New) Labour party, privatization of services and "PPPs" (public-private partnerships) were promoted. Public assets like ports and rail, municipal services such as water, hydro, etc. gradually made their way into the hands of corporations and elites. Those favouring a privatized healthcare system, like the one found in the United States, have for years—through legislative initiatives, through hiring pro-corporate administrators, through the creation of additional bureaucratic structures within the NHS, and of course, the usual graft and corruption—have gradually chipped away at the service until, as Gill and others now fear, core values of universality of access and comprehensive treatment of patients are at risk. Gill warns that the NHS is in danger of becoming a healthcare system as rife with inefficiencies, greed, and corruption as found in the United States. I was interested to learn just how much American investment and influence there was in Britain with respect to the healthcare sector. (Ah, globalism! Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it soon enough!)

I was made aware just how precariously placed are even the most valued and respected of social programs, including our own, here in Canada. And I was reminded, again, how capitalism, that great golem we've created, seeks out anything that will provide it with a revenue stream, no matter if it destroys that stream in the process. Viewing “Heist” only deepens my distrust and loathing of corporations and their myriad familars in government and elsewhere.

 

So, best not get sick!

Cheers, Jake

 

 

* Of course, the title is a nod to the “Great Train Robbery” of 1963 where £2.6 million was stolen from a Glasgow to London British Mail train. A good portion of the loot, IIRC, was never recovered. And at least one of the robbers spent much of his life living large in sunny climes. Somehow, this robbery seems more 'honest' that the one being done to the NHS.