Why I'm the NHS's Number 1 Fan

I’m a big fan of the National Health Service, the public healthcare system in the UK. Like, a really big fan. I’ll explain.

Every medical professional who has ever looked at my dad’s health records (and believe me, there have been A LOT of them) has said that my dad is “sick”. It all started in 2002 and it happened very suddenly. Now, before I go any further, I’ll preface by saying that I was 7 at the time, so a lot of these memories have been exaggerated or fuzzied over time. Over about a two-week period in November of 2002, My dad lost at least 50 pounds of weight (he was never obese, but he went from being pleasantly chubby to being basically skin and bones), and was having terrible stomach problems. We were living in the UK at the time, so we rushed him to the local hospital’s emergency ward. Apparently he had developed pancreatitis and diabetes at the same time. Yeah, that sucked. He needed major surgery. So he got it, right away. There was very little wait time. He was moved to a hospital a few hours away, where there was an awesome pancreas surgeon. So he was there for about two weeks, and then he came home.

When he came home, as I said, he was terribly skinny, but he felt a lot better. His diabetes didn’t fit into either type 1 or type 2, so managing it was a little tough for him at first. But her figured it out. He had to take an incredible cocktail of drugs for about 12 years, but apart from that, he was my dad. While we were still in England, he went back to the hospital for regular checkups, but things were going well.

And then, in 2005, we moved to New Jersey. This is where the real trouble began. For starters, my dad had to find all new doctors. That’s right, doctors plural. And because of privatized healthcare, he had to find doctors who were “in network” – doctors who accepted the insurance plan that my dad’s employer provided. Well this was different. In England, every doctor accepted healthcare because it was all the same. There was one, nationalized, healthcare system. That was the first major change.

Now, back to doctors plural. My dad needed, to start: a pancreatitis doc, a diabetes doc (not the same guy, apparently – and yes, they were all male doctors), a general practitioner. And then, about 6 years later, my dad got kidney stones and his kidneys began to shut down on him. So now he needed a kidney doc. Here’s where the second major change comes in… His doctors were all in separate private practices. And again, thanks to the glorious product of free-market capitalism that this country loves so much, none of these docs communicated with each other. So my dad had to give his entire medical history to at least 5 different doctors. And then, every time one doc wanted to do a blood test or an MRI or any other standard procedure, my dad would check to see if he had any recent results from every other doctor. By the end of 5 years in the US, my dad had binders and binders of all of his separate medical records. In the UK, every doctor has their patients entire medical history, because the records are stored in the NHS database, which, again, EVERY PERMANENT RESIDENT IN THE UK IS AUTOMATICALLY ENROLLED IN.

So, let’s go a little deeper. And here is one of the biggest flaws in a system of privatized healthcare. Doctors are paid for the services they provide. They are not salaried. So to make buckets of money, doctors need to do a lot of procedures, and expensive ones too. And patients, most of whom have little medical knowledge, are often persuaded to have unnecessary procedures. Now that really sucks. My dad has had so many blood tests, I’m surprised he has any left. Again, this does not happen in the UK. The government, through taxes, pays doctors. And I fundamentally believe that the UK has a better system.

So why do so many Americans disagree with single-payer healthcare??? I have no idea, but if I were to guess, I would say that we have been socialized to believe that our government should not provide “handouts” to those who can’t afford it. In a nationalized single-payer system, like in the UK, this happens. Every single person is enrolled in the NHS. Because the UK believes that healthcare is a right that everyone is entitled to. In the US, apparently, this belief isn’t held as strongly. We believe that we need a choice in our healthcare. This is free-market capitalism at its finest. If we let insurers compete for customers (and, in America, that’s what we are – customers), then we’ll get the best service at the best price. Well sure, if you can afford it. For everyone else, and this is a lot of people, you either get sub-par service with premiums and co-pays through the roof, or you’re uninsured. And if you get majorly sick when you’re uninsured, you’re SOL.

Luckily, my dad has great insurance here. And even though he’s had two transplants, we haven’t gone bankrupt from healthcare costs. So thanks Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. But the logistical nightmare that is the US healthcare system is not only inefficient, but it is fundamentally unequal.

So yeah, I’m a BIG FAN of the NHS.