The lies about the NHS
August 12th, 2009
Sensible people in Britain seem shocked — shocked! — that right-wing liars in the US are spreading lies about the National Health Service.
In my 27 years in the UK I had consistently excellent healthcare, so I’m a big fan of the NHS. I know that a single-payer system, to say nothing of a massive government bureaucracy for health, isn’t remotely on the agenda in the US, but the American misunderstanding and fear of the NHS is absurd.
Fortunately, today’s Guardian has two helpful articles sorting truth from lies: Is public healthcare in the UK as sick as rightwing America claims? and America’s right turns its fire on the NHS. They’ve also put together a nice spreadsheet of comparative data on health in different countries. There doesn’t seem to be a way to embed the spreadsheet so have a look over on Google Docs.
Update Ezra Klein has more. I missed the Twitter storm on this.
Photo by Pickersgill Reef from Flickr