We are getting there

I do not believe I have ever watched or experienced a more boring, stupid and content-less campaign in all the years (since my school days) that I have been interested in politics. As the last day of campaigning wears on I shall write about it some more but now I'd like to concentrate briefly on one subject that is supposed to be the political holy of holies: the NHS.

We all know what a lot of nonsense is spoken about it; we all know how ridiculous is the claim that without the NHS most people would not have access to healthcare because, it would seem, in all other developed countries sick people are simply dying in the streets; and we also know that there is a great deal of nonsense spoken about the NHS being untouchable because everyone adores it and would not have things any other way. People might (but only might as I don't trust the way hacks reinterpret things) say that but the number of British people who have some kind of a health insurance is growing all the time and most employers offer some form of it as part of the employment package.

A good many of my frustrations with people who seem unable to think straight about healthcare were summed up by an interesting briefing paper, recently produced by the Institute of Economic Affairs, entitled What Are We Afraid Of? and subtitled Universal healthcare in market-oriented health systems. It is not a long paper and well worth reading (the link takes you to the pdf version of it).

Kristian Niemietz, the author, says a couple of times that he is not producing solutions to the enormous problems all healthcare systems in the developed world face but he is advocating a more rational discussion that looks at systems that are not single-payer ones, like the NHS and not the US system, which, in his opinion (and I agree) "is singled out because its well-known flaws make it a relatively easy target to attack".

The three countries he does look at have various versions of social health insurance (SHI) systems and are none the worse for it. They are Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, where the population as a whole has access to high level of medical care but where the funding system is complex and involves a great many private for profit and non profit organizations. Yet, this systems, which would be relatively easy to introduce in the UK and they may well improve the healthcare we have, are never discussed because that might destroy the myth of the NHS's uniqueness.

Two paragraphs from the Summary give a very good idea of the inadequate standard of discussion:

The UK is far from being the only country which has achieved universal access to healthcare. With the notable exception of the US, practically all developed countries (and plenty of developing countries) have managed to do so in one way or another. But Britain is probably the only country where universal healthcare coverage is still celebrated as if it was a very special achievement.

The NHS is often unduly eulogised for minor achievements, because it is being held to unrealistically low standards. The NHS should not be compared with the state of healthcare as it was prior to 1948, or with a hypothetical situation in which all healthcare costs had to be paid out of pocket. Rather, it should be compared with the most realistic alternative: the social health insurance (SHI) systems of Continental Europe, especially the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.

Curiously enough, soon after I finished reading the paper I came across one of those "you have one day in which to save the NHS" comments on another forum in which UK system was lauded more or less because it managed to save one person's life. Apparently, no other system could do anything of the kind.

Read the whole paper. The subject is not going to go away, not even after tomorrow.

Actually we need fewer MPs

How often do we hear the cry that MPs represent constituencies that are too large, that we need more MPs, that representative government cannot survive in existing circumstances? I suggest that all those who ever utter nonsense of this kind have a look at the latest brouhaha around the proposal made by Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, that sugary breakfast cereals should either be banned or severely controlled by the state.

Apparently, he "has started garnering public and expert opinion on the subject as part of a consultation on tackling obesity". No doubt, he has, at our expense. Somebody has to pay all those experts to promulgate more state control.

His proposals are intended to prevent more obesity in children. Of course, they are. Everything these people do or propose to do is for the children, as if that made it all right to introduce state control over matters that is none of the politicians' business. Let us not even speculate who would be the people who would do well out of production of breakfast cereals that have passed some enormous quango's imprimatur. Corrupt? Our politicians and regulators? I am shocked, shocked that anyone could even suggest such a thing.

Obesity in children becomes an issue roughly speaking four times a year. The rest of the time we worry about eating disorders in children. The best solution would be to leave children to their devices (controlled by parents for the most part), encourage them to move about a good deal more and stop inducing neuroses in them about food. Eat less, move more is usually the best answer to obesity, assuming we can define it, which is not usually the case.

Having seen a number of MPs in my working life I have to report that a good many of them look unfit, have beer bellies and are often fat to the point of obesity. As with financial matters so with this: I see no reason why we should be lectured by these bozos (I use the word advisedly) on the subject.

Of course, we know what this is all about. Yes, it is our old friend, displacement activity. One way or another our MPs have given up any legislative power they might have to the EU, to quangos (and the two are often closely united) and, in the case of the unions, to the public sector unions who would like to paralyze all attempts to reform healthcare in this country. No real legislation is possible and they are mostly too scared to hold the Executive to account. So they come up with this nonsense. I say we need far fewer MPs. Halve the numbers at the very least.

Cross-border health care

Just today I have been told again by somebody who thought he was very superior and sarcastic in his comments (for arguments they cannot be called) that the EU was not the enemy (true, it is the political class) and, really, what is all the fuss about. Has the House of Commons really voted away more powers recently, he asked with a smirk, and told me that his comments would probably leave me very angry. Actually, I said, determined ignorance leaves me full of contempt rather than anger.

When people genuinely do not know but ready to find out I am equally ready to explain. I am also very sympathetic to those who say they have enough trouble making their living and bringing up their family to have any time for rooting around in those boring EU documents. But when I hear somebody who is convinced he (or she, there are no gender differences in this) knows so much better than hopeless rubes like all those eurosceptics about politics and sneers in a superior fashion while refusing to find out the most basic facts, contempt becomes the most appropriate reaction.

On the subject of powers moving away: EurActiv reports

Despite opposition behind the scenes, plans to let Europeans seek medical treatment in other countries in the 27-country bloc surged forward Tuesday (21 December) when EU countries gave their stamp of approval.

The deal, reached at ambassador level (Coreper), paves the way for a vote in Parliament on 19 January and increases the chances the cross-border healthcare directive could be in force as early as 2013.

Coreper is the Committee of Permanent Representatives, possibly the most powerful body in the EU.

On the whole 2013 sounds a bit optimistic to me. There will be many hurdles to get over and even if the Directive is in place it will have to be implemented in the Member States and who knows what the situation will be by then.

As it happens, I think we shall do quite well out of this as a number of European countries have better hospital care and are ahead of the NHS in various treatments. For all of that, this will not be an example of a bilateral or, even, multilateral agreement between various countries. This will mean control over healthcare moving over to the EU. I am quite sure that the House of Commons will, if it comes up, vote the necessary legislation through and I am equally sure that I shall still get sneering comments about my obsession with power seeping over to the EU.

It must be the water they drink

Do politicians drink water? Is there some special water that is sent round just to politicians, for the attention of? That is what it looks like, I must say.

Take the Conservative Party and its leader the Boy-King (well, OK, I'll take him temporarily). It is perfectly obvious to all and sundry that his personal popularity started plummeting around last November when he reneged on his "cast-iron guarantee" for a referendum on the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty. Yet, all one hears from the self-same Boy-King, his acolytes (of whom there are ever fewer) and other Conservative activists is the same old mantra: the Lisbon Treaty does not matter, people don't care about Europe (I'll blog Hague's speech separately), we are the party to renew faith in politicians' honesty (an oxymoron if ever there was one). Are they listening to themselves?

Similarly, it is obvious to all and sundry that personal attacks on Gordon Brown not only do not work but are, actually, counter-productive. The electorate will listen to attacks on his record as Chancellor or as Prime Minister but finds attacks on him as a man distasteful. It takes some kind of a political genius to make Gordon Brown an object of sympathy but the Conservative strategists have managed it. And yet they continue to attack him manners, his clothes, his behaviour, even his looks. Are they listening to themselves?

It seems that things are no different over the Pond (as if we didn't know). Here is a posting from Glenn Reynolds, which he entitles A CRACK SUICIDE SQUAD FROM THE JUDEAN PEOPLE’S FRONT. He links to an article on Hot Air, which tells us:

Barack Obama hits the campaign trail again this month in support of a tremendously unpopular ObamaCare bill — and his numbers have started nose-diving again.

Any connection there, one wonders. Apparently, yes or, at least, maybe. Another link to Riehl indicates that Obama's arrogance is seen as the problem. In other words, maybe he ought not assume that if HE hits the trail all will be well because that has been counter-productive so far. Apparently, this simple equation has not penetrated the consciousness of Obama's gifted strategists.

It must be the water.

Quite extraordinary

As it happens, I do shop from time to time in Whole Foods in Kensington. When I was in New York I shopped there more often, not least because it was a cheaper option for a take-away lunch than it is in Britain. But it has many things that one cannot get anywhere else and a reasonable selection of others.

I have no problems with buying organic food (and not all of it is at Whole Foods) because I reckon that anyone who is prepared to pay the premium should have the choice to do so. The idea of opposing the production and purchase of organic food on ideological grounds is, in my opinion, laughable. When it comes to dairy produce and eggs, organic tastes much better, anyway. But then, food is never discussed in Britain on the basis of taste.

Whole Foods is, however, quite expensive, which will make it a little difficult for me to support it as all right-thinking people should because it is being boycotted by all those who are hysterical about Obamacare. Michelle Malkin's account is not exactly unbiased but reasonably accurate.

Here is John Mackey's article in the Wall Street Journal that has caused the fracas. In it he argues against the various proposals emanating or not emanating from the Democrats and the thumping propaganda from the White House, suggesting various free-market solutions to the problem of health care in the United States.

Anyone would think he had proposed to boil the President in oil or to nuke Congress. The Obamacare supporters are screaming for a boycott (though this is being countered by many people who are calling for support) and the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union is leafleting some Whole Foods stores with seriously inaccurate information.

What intrigued me particularly on the leaflet that Michelle reproduces on her blog is the sentence: "Do you really want your shopping dollars going to executives who are undermining President Obama?". Then there is the inevitable call for John Mackey to go.

This is a mixture of sheer idiocy and a Stalinist outlook on life. No company gets rid of a CEO because he has written a reasonable and relevant article or because some picketers demand it.

Secondly, those shopping dollars do not go to the CEO but the company, which, in the case of Whole Food, includes all the employees, who have various benefits as well as shareholders, who do reasonably well out of it, and are ploughed back into a very successful business.

Thirdly, and most importantly, it is a little disturbing to hear the argument in the United States of all countries, that there is something shocking and outrageous in a businessman criticizing the President, all criticism being an attempt to "undermine" the POTUS.

There is another aspect to this, noted by a few people already. The health care fiasco is described as Obama's very own; the failure of what is described as a "reform" would be according to many, the destruction of his presidency; the people who oppose it - an ever larger number - are undermining the President. This means that whichever way matters pan out; if some health care bill is pushed through in the teeth of growing opposition or if it fails, President Obama will be the fall guy. The Congress Democrats will distance themselves from the whole mess. Can he not see this?

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has an entertaining post about the union fat-cats who are directing the attacks on Whole Foods.

Does our Prime Minister have nothing else to do?

On Wednesday evening I received a message about the BBC and the NHS (both using taxpayers’ money) joining in a Twitter campaign to promote the joys of the NHS in the United States where the battle about Obamacare healthcare reform health insurance reform is raging.

Would I join the battle and Twitter anti-NHS messages? My reply was that I don’t do Twitter as it is a waste of time and see no point in joining the battle that way but I shall alert a few American bloggers. This I duly did and they duly ignored me. In fact, as far as I can make out nobody apart from the British media is at all excited about that campaign.

As I wrote on EUReferendum, in connection with the ill-fated attempt on the part of the Guardian and its readers to tell Americans how to vote, this sort of behaviour is not well regarded in other countries, especially as feelings are already running high.

By now probably everybody knows about the idiotic Twitter campaign on which various people, led by the PM and his fragrant wife, told those boorish Yanks that they love the NHS. Also everybody knows that the whole debate here has degenerated into another discussion about Daniel Hannan MEP, who has clearly abandoned all hope of making himself a career in domestic British politics and is spending a great deal of his time taking part in American talk shows and participating in American debates.

In response he has been called unpatriotic and an opponent of the Conservative Party, both ideas completely idiotic. Why on earth is it unpatriotic to criticize the NHS, a failed model of healthcare, if ever there was one? (It is not, in fact, being proposed in the United States, in so far as we know what is being proposed.)

So we have a situation in which the Americans are discussing the future of healthcare in their country, with occasional reference to the NHS though that rather silly nonsense about Stephen Hawking was not used by American conservatives, despite James Delingpole’s winsome little posting. The story appeared briefly on one outlet and was taken off as soon as the mistakes in it were pointed out.

Would that stupid and ignorant comments about American healthcare made by all sorts of people in Britain could be taken off as soon as mistakes were pointed out. But no, we are superior and we know best even when we do not bother to find out what is going on.

I had one debate with one of these superior personalities who was making sniffy comments about whacky death panel arguments. I suggested that he stopped using words like whacky and tried to find out what has been said about those panels including some serious analysis of Obama’s comments about his grandmother’s hip replacement operation. In return I was told that this particular idiot was not going to get involved in Palinesque wackiness. End of discussion with one rather stupid and ignorant person chuckling at his own wit and intelligence and no understanding that actually Palin won the debate.

The best summary of all the misunderstandings and stupidities spouted on both sides of the Pond was made by Dizzy on his blog, which I rarely read as I am not particularly interested in the topics he chooses. Perhaps I shall do so hereafter.

Sadly, unlike what’s going on in USA right now, the structure and delivery of healthcare services is not even a matter for discussion in the UK anymore. Instead, the snobbish and arrogant British superiority complex rears its head, and stupidly deems that the structure we have is the best possible. Bland, meaningless and nonsense statements about it being the "envy of the world" are rolled out, and the debate is simplified down to "spending more money is good, spending less is bad".

Essentially we have an infantile level of debate on the subject in the UK, and hilariously we have the balls to start trying to preach to a country on the other side of the Atlantic about how wonderful our system is and how terribly evil theirs’ is? Frankly, it's pathetic. On one side we have a system being caricatured and used as a political football, whilst on the other we have panty wetting screaming and shouting about how terribly unfair the caricature is, and equally silly caricatures thrown back. It makes everyone look like complete and total morons.

One cannot help thinking that all this insane and vociferous support for the NHS is another display of our favourite sport – America-bashing, particularly right-wing America-bashing. Hey, some Americans on the right have made rude comments about our beloved NHS. How dare they? How bloody dare they? We know that they spend their whole time killing off poor people and their healthcare is the worst in the world with people dying in the streets because there is no NHS to save them.

What do you mean they have Medicaid and their survival rate of every serious disease is considerably higher than ours? What has that to do with anything?

People are complaining about the NHS and ever more Brits are taking out private health insurance? What has that to do anything? We are out to prove to those uppity Yanks that we are the best in the world and that our … sob …. our very own NHS as created by Nye Bevan, using the Soviet model is the envy of the world. What do you mean nobody in the world has imitated it? What has that to do with anything?

Three questions present themselves immediately. One is about our Prime Minister. Has he really nothing else to do but to get involved in what is, after all, an internal debate in the United States of an extent that he would not dare to start in this country?

The second one is a little more complicated. Just exactly when did the NHS and the BBC become the epitome of what this country is about? People who are ready to surrender our parliamentary and judicial system, which really have been the envy or the world for centuries, scream blue murder if anyone as much as criticizes these two recent and failed institutions.

Thirdly, I should like to ask when are we, in Britain, going to have a serious discussion about healthcare that will involve radical reforms to the NHS. The twelfth of never, the way we are going.

Really strange

Just about everybody in Britain agrees that we have serious problems with our healthcare and, in particular, with the NHS, which swallows up a huge part of the budget, employs more people nowadays than even the Red Army and provides care that is mostly below the standard that could be expected from a rich, highly developed country.

Yet the only reason a debate is getting under way (even if it is still on the level of NHS the best in the world - no it is the pits) is because we are piggy-backing on the rather vehement American discussions that are actually about something quite different.

More on this absorbing topic tomorrow.