Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS)was created on July 5, 1948. As with all government programs, bureaucrats underestimated initial cost projections. First-year operating costs of NHS were 52 million pounds higher than original estimates1 as Britons saturated the so-called free system.
Many decades of shortages, misery and suffering followed until 1989, when some market-based health care competition was reintroduced to the British citizens2.
Unfortunately for those requiring care, a mostly socialist health care system has problems. The articles and commentaries in this section identify some disasters caused by government intervention in the British health care system.
- Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE
- April 29, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] - Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage
- David Rose, April 23, 2009 [Times Online] - Number of children going to hospital to have teeth pulled soars by 66% since 1997
- Daniel Martin and Cher Thornhill, April 12, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] - NHS ‘failings’ over elderly falls
- March 25, 2009 [BBC] - Learning disabled ‘failed by NHS’
- Nick Triggle, March 24, 2009 [BBC] - Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait
- Lyndsay Moss, March 21, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Culture of targets prevents nurses from tending to patients
- Claire Rayner, President of the Patients Association, March 21, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - Children being failed by health system, says head of watchdog
- Sarah Boseley, March 21, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - Our cancer shame: Survival rates still lag behind EU despite spending billions
- Jenny Hope, March 20, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Failing hospital ’caused deaths’
- March 17, 2009 [BBC] - Health gap drive ‘wasted money’
- Nick Triggle, March 14, 2009 [BBC] - Longer GP opening hours branded wasteful ‘PR exercise’ by doctors
- Lyndsay Moss, March 13, 2009 [The Scotsman] - “Political meddling” threatens general practice, warns GP leader
- March 13, 2009 [Management in Practice (UK)] - Children at risk through lack of training for doctors and nurses, report warns
- Rebecca Smith, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - Chocolate should be taxed to control obesity epidemic, doctors are told
- Simon Johnson, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - 1,000 villagers wait for a dentist after just one NHS practice opens
- March 10, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Study that proves the folly of NHS Alzheimer’s drug ban
- Jenny Hope, March 7, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - NHS charges to rise in England
- March 5, 2009 [BBC] - Disabled children wait up to two years for wheelchairs
- March 4, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS under fire over waiting times
- February 25, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Government procrastination blamed for HIV-contaminated blood tragedy
- February 23, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - Specialist nurses ‘vastly overworked’
- February 20, 2009 [Harwich & Manningtree Standard] - Hundreds of operations cancelled at Lothian hospitals
- Adam Morris, February 19, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Stop asking for antibiotics to cure coughs and colds, Government tells patients
- Daniel Martin, February 17, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Stroke services are ‘UK’s worst’
- February 17, 2009 [BBC] - Hospitals curb caesarean births
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, February 15, 2009 [The Times] - Only five out of 51 hospital trusts pass hygiene test, say inspectors
- Sarah Boseley, November 24, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, August 24, 2008 [The Times] - Heart patients dying due to poor hospital care, says report
- Sarah Boseley, June 8, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS dentistry loses almost a million patients after new dentists’ contract
- David Rose, June 6, 2008 [The Times] - Private healthcare managers could be sent to turn round failing NHS hospitals
- Philip Webster, Political Editor, and David Rose, June 4, 2008 [The Times] - Cancer patients ‘betrayed’ by NHS
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] - NHS scandal: dying cancer victim was forced to pay
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] - Pensioner, 76, forced to pull out own teeth after 12 NHS dentists refuse to treat her
- Olinka Koster, March 26, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Dental patients face care lottery
- March 26, 2008 [Metro(UK)] - Lung patients ‘condemned to death as NHS withdraws their too expensive drugs’
- Jenny Hope, March 24, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Women in labour turned away by maternity units
- John Carvel, March 21, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Health inequality has got worse under Labour, says government report
- Andrew Sparrow, March 13, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Angry GPs reluctantly accept plan for weekend and evening surgeries
- John Carvel, March 7, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she’s ‘too old’ for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery
- Chris Brooke, February 28, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Patient ‘removed’ from waiting list to meet target
- January 31, 2008 [The Scotsman] - NHS patients told to treat themselves
- James Kirkup, January 4, 2008 [Telegraph UK] - NHS is ‘failing patients’ despite record funding
- Rebecca Smith, October 4, 2007 [Telegraph UK] - NHS rationing rife, say doctors
- September 24, 2007 [BBC] - One in eight patients waiting over a year for treatment, admits minister
- John Carvel, June 8, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - Audit Office asked to investigate record £500m NHS underspend
- John Carvel, May 30, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - The drugs the NHS won’t give you
- May 11, 2007 [Telegraph UK] - UK lagging behind on cancer drug access, study finds
- May 10, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - One in six trusts is still putting patients on mixed-sex wards
- Daniel Martin, May 10, 2007 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Specialist stroke care ‘lottery’
- May 9, 2007 [BBC News] - Smokers and the obese banned from UK hospitals
- May 2, 2007 [Healthcare News] - Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS
- Lyndsay Moss, February 13, 2007 [The Scotsman] - UK health service “harms 10 percent of patients”
- Kate Kelland, July 7, 2006 [Reuters] - 5,000 elderly ‘killed each year’ by lack of care beds
- June 26, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - Dental Socialism in Britain
- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., May 9, 2006 [LewRockwell.com] - Pay for nurses and surgeons doubles NHS overspend
- Beezy Marsh, Patrick Hennessy and Nina Goswami, April 23, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - The money addicts: it’s your cash they are gambling with
- Patience Wheatcroft, April 23, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - NHS chiefs get luxury car deals
- Daniel Foggo and Steven Swinford, April 9, 2006 [The Times] - Secret NHS plan to ration patient care
- Nigel Hawkes, April 7, 2006 [The Times] - British Healthcare To Be Rationed
- April 7, 2006 [United Press International] - British body rejects EPO drugs for cancer patients
- March 17, 2006 [Reuters] - National Health Service – Grappling with Deficits
- March 9, 2006 [Economist.com] - Hundreds wait to register as another dentist quits the NHS
- Martin Williams, September 23, 2005 [The Herald (Scotland)] - Life-saving cancer drugs ‘kept from NHS patients by red tape’
- Sam Lister, September 20, 2005 [The Times] - NHS slides into the red despite record increases in health care spending
- September 20, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - Alzheimer’s sufferers hit by further delay in NHS approval for vital drugs
- Michael Day, September 18, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - We all pay a price for our ‘free’ NHS
- John Smith, August 19, 2005 [The Scotsman] - 2,000 British doctors out of work
- August 14, 2005 [The Washington Times] - UK health ‘unsustainable’
- August 14, 2005 [Finance24] - NHS faces rising bill for negligence claims
- Ben Hall, August 8, 2005 [Financial Times] - British boy to go to India for operation
- August 5, 2005 [United Press International] - NHS failed to stop doctor raping scores of women
- Lois Rogers and Jonathon Carr-Brown, July 31, 2005 [The Times] - Top crimewriter funds drugs for cancer victim refused by NHS
- Martyn Halle, July 8, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - Report says NHS is mired in huge debts
- David Simms, June 25, 2005 [ABC Money (UK)] - U.K. set to restrict smoking
- June 21, 2005 [The Associated Press] - NHS ‘fund bias’ against men may cost 2,500 lives a year
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 19, 2005 [The Times] - Doubts on funding NHS ‘monuments’
- Nicholas Timmins, June 10, 2005 [Financial Times] - 17 million reasons why we must improve hospital meals
- June 7, 2005 [Cambridge Evening News] - Figures show more patients waiting for operations
- June 3, 2005 [Guardian UK] - Scarcity of NHS dental treatment is revealed
- Celia Hall, May 19, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - Why NHS Opposes ‘Treatment by Demand’ for the Dying
- Stephen Howard and Jan Colley, PA, May 18, 2005 [Scotsman] - 800 queue for NHS dentists
- May 5, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - Hundreds more heroin addicts to be given a fix on the NHS
- Nic Fleming, April 25, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - British health service facing nurse exodus
- April 25, 2005 [United Press International] - About 400 patients a year in Scotland succumb to MRSA
- April 25, 2005 [Scotsman] - NHS debts soar to over £1bn
- Karyn Miller, April 24, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - British taxpayers foot $26.5 million bill for abortion tourists
- April 18, 2005 [Catholic World News] - U.K. Liberal Democrats Would Raise Taxes to Pay for Health Care
- Reed Landberg, April 14, 2005 [Bloomberg] - Number of NHS Bureaucrats ‘Rising Faster Than Health Staff’
- Joe Churcher, March 22, 2005 [Scotsman] - ‘£500m hole’ in hospital budgets
- Celia Hall, March 21, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - 1,000 Scots desert NHS every week
- Murdo Macleod, March 5, 2005 [Scotsman] - British NHS facing financial crisis
- March 3, 2005 [Washington Times] - NHS drugs regulator to withdraw approval of Alzheimer’s treatment
- Nicholas Timmins, March 2, 2005 [FT.com - Financial Times] - NHS waiting list rises
- February 11, 2005 [Guardian UK] - Tumour patients hit by NHS shortages
- Jo Revill, February 6, 2005 [Guardian UK] - NHS financial crises set to outlast winter
- Mike Waites, February 4, 2005 [Yorkshire Post] - NHS 24 ‘priority’ callers wait four hours for advice
- Caroline Wilson, January 14, 2005 [Evening Times (UK)] - ‘No strategy’ on NHS waiting time
- January 14, 2005 [BBC] - Output figures show NHS decline
- John Carvel, October 19, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Heart patients die on waiting lists
- Peter Sharples, October 18, 2004 [Manchester Online] - £25bn overspend feared for NHS computer network
- Karen Attwood, October 12, 2004 [telegraph.co.uk] - Gaps in care cost £7bn, says charity
- John Carvel, October 4, 2004 [Guardian UK] - NHS excluding poor people, UK
- September 15, 2004 [Medical News Today] - Smokers ’should not get NHS care’
- September 6, 2004 [BBC News] - Waiting list row blights Brighton
- John Carvel, September 4, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Patients are denied the last rites under data protection law
- Elizabeth Day, July 25, 2004 [telegraph.co.uk] - Shortage of dentists to double by 2011
- John Carvel, July 24, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Britain’s stiff upper lip gives way to a snarl
- Sarah Lyall, July 18, 2004 [The New York Times] - Hospital Overcrowding A Cause of Superbug Infections
- John von Radowitz, July 1, 2004 [Scotsman.com] - Hospital Crisis: Fallen Angels
- Lindsay Mcgarvie, May 23, 2004 [Glasgow Sunday Mail] - Study finds British hospitals are still austere, cold, smelly and poorly maintained
- May 6, 2004 [News-Medical.net] - Hospital bathrooms and showers: a continuing saga of inadequacy
- Andy Monro, MRCP & Graham P Mulley, DM, FRCP, May 2004 [Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine] - Majority back public smoking ban
- March 24, 2004 [BBC] - Discrimination Rampant In British Health Care
- Peter Moore, November 17, 2003 [365gay.com] - PERIPATETICS—To the Medical Socialists of All Parties
- Sheldon Richman, September 2003 [FEE.org] - Creeping Privatization?
Shortages of skilled workers, low morale, long queues for services, crumbling facilities and corrupt practises. - Roland Watson, August 6, 2001 [LewRockwell.com] - The World’s Worst HMO
- Stephen D. Moore, November 24, 1999 [Random Thoughts] - Socialized Medicine in Great Britain: Lessons for the Oregon Health Plan
- Professor John Spiers, March 18, 1999 [Cascade Policy Institute] - The Sickbed Which is Socialized British Medicine
- December 23, 1997 [NCPA] - The British Way of Withholding Care
- Harry Schwarz, March 1989 [FEE.org]
Canada
Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Health Act in 1984 and established a single-payer, publicly-financed health care system. To ensure a true government monopoly (is there any other kind?) Canadian provinces outlawed private health insurance.
- Cathryn Atkinson, April 8, 2008 [Globe and Mail]
- March 27, 2008 [CTV.ca]
- Lisa Priest, February 22, 2008 [Globe and Mail]
- Don Surber, March 3, 2008 [Acton Institute]
- October 15, 2007 [CBC News (Canada)]
- David Gratzer, Summer 2007 [City Journal]
- May 28, 2007 [CBC News]
- June 28, 2006 [CCN Matthews]
- March 17, 2006 [CTV.ca]
- Rebecca Cook Dube, August 8, 2005 [CS Monitor]
- Gillian Livingston, July 15, 2005 [Canadian Press]
- D’Arcy Jenish, July 7, 2005 [Ontario Business News]
- Walter Williams, June 20, 2005 [Capitalism Magazine]
- June 9, 2005 [CBC Montreal]
- May 24, 2005 [Canadian Press]
- Jennifer O’Brien, May 21, 2005 [London Free Press]
- April 10, 2005 [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]
- Sheryl Ubelacker, CP, April 6, 2005 [London Free Press]
- Beth Duff-Brown, March 19, 2005 [The Associated Press]
- Colin Perkel, March 4, 2005 [The Canadian Press]
- February 16, 2005 [CBC Calgary]
- February 15, 2005 [Canada.com]
- Aaron Derfel, February 12, 2005 [Montreal Gazette]
- February 9, 2005 [Macleans.ca]
- Dr. Charles Shaver, January 20, 2005 [Toronto Star]
- Mark Kennedy, January 14, 2005 [National Post (Canada)]
- Lisa Priest, January 13, 2005 [The Globe and Mail]
- Tom Brodbeck, December 4, 2004 [The Winnipeg Sun]
- Aaron Derfel, December 3, 2004 [The Gazette (Montreal)]
- Chris Traber, November 14, 2004 [Yorkregion.com]
- Jennifer Stewart and Jeffrey Simpson, October 28, 2004 [The Halifax Herald Limited]
…it answers, “an ever-increasing demand from the public for greater accessibility and quality of health services.” - October 13, 2004 [CTV.ca]
- Sheryl Ubelacker, September 20, 2004 [Canada.com]
- Jeremy Copeland, September 20, 2004 [CBC News]
- Clifford Krauss, September 18, 2004 [Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune]
- David Ljunggren, September 14, 2004 [Reuters (Ottawa)]
- September 5, 2004 [Toronto Star]
- Robert J. Cihak, M.D., September 1, 2004 [Health Care News]
- August 19, 2004 [MSNBC]
- August 16, 2004 [CTV.ca]
- Michael Hurley, August 8, 2004 [Toronto Star]
“It’s inhuman. The quality of my life is horrible and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.” - Jason Fekete, July 28, 2004 [Calgary Herald]
Canadian doctors and nurses are fed up with inter-governmental “bickering” that is dragging out wait times and causing more pain and suffering for patients. - July 28, 2004 [Winnipeg Sun]
…in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. - Walter E. Williams, July 24, 2004 [CATO]
All the major candidates in Canada’s recent national election acknowledged that the country’s health-care system is failing Canadians. - Robert J. Cihak, July 13, 2004 [The Seattle Times]
Canada’s health-care system is “five to 10 years” from the breaking point — even with cash injections from government, says the new president of the B.C. Medical Association. - Doug Alexander, July 5, 2004 [Vancouver Sun]
“Go into the emergency room — it is the most pitiful piece of work you ever seen in your life.” - David Bruser, June 22, 2004 [Toronto Star]
Analyst visits NC to describe how single-payer health care really works in practice. - Donna Martinez, June 17, 2004 [Carolina Journal]
Women waited months for radiation; lawsuit could cost system $50-million. - Ingrid Peritz, March 11, 2004 [The Globe and Mail]
‘You get knee surgery within two days … try and get that in human hospitals.’ Canada’s [private] pet health-insurance industry is projected to grow at roughly 50 per cent a year… - Robert Scalia, November 30, 2003 [Montreal Gazette]
- Daniel Girard, November 29, 2003 [Toronto Star]
- Clifford Krauss, October 17, 2003 [The New York Times]
- Brian Lee Crowley, October 9, 2003 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- Valerie Lawton, September 26, 2003 [Toronto Star]
Almost half of Canadian doctors say they’re burned out, emotionally exhausted and blame medicine for putting a drain on their family life. - Karen Palmer, August 20, 2003 [Toronto Star]
While she insists she’s not making any money off the venture, she says it provides an income allowance for her and her husband, the other principal in the company. - Theresa Boyle and Robert Benzie, July 28, 2003 [Toronto Star]
The Canadian system, however, tends to push up overall spending on prescription drugs, despite the low prices for some brand name ones. - John Melby, July 2, 2003 [Buckeye Institute]
- William L. Anderson, November 29, 2002 [Mises]
- August 2002 [Fraser Institute]
- May 1, 2001 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- James Frogue and Robert Moffit, December 25, 2000 [Capitalism Magazine]
Explores several lessons that can be drawn from the Canadian experience with socialized medicine:
- Socialized medicine, although of poor quality, is very expensive;
- Political compromise is the result;
- Socialized medicine is both a consequence and a great contributor to the idea that economic conditions should be equalized by coercion. - Pierre Lemieux [The Freeman]
…if Canadians knew as much as they think they do about the economic and moral workings of Medicare, they might not be as enthusiastic as they are about their cherished right to ‘free’ health care. - Andrei Kreptul, August 30, 2000 [Mises]
- Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D. and Kerri Houston, May 1, 2000 (PDF format)
- Lawrence W. Reed, February 23, 2000 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- January 26, 2000 [NCPA]
- William McArthur, former chief coroner for British Columbia, January 28, 2000
As Canada’s national government slashes spending on medical care in order to reduce the deficit, local provinces are reducing medical staff. In Ontario, pregnant women are being sent to Detroit because no obstetricians are available. Specialists of all kinds are in short supply. Patients have to wait eight weeks for an MRI, ten weeks for referral to a specialist, and four months for heart bypass surgery. - Michael J. Hurd, November 1997 [Liberty Haven]
- Michael Walker, August 1994 [Liberty Haven]
I tell you this not to alarm you, to elicit sympathy, or to bore you. I tell you because the episode has been, for me, a salutary lesson (just in case I needed one) in why the government should not be allowed anywhere near a syringe, a dressing, a scalpel, an oxygen mask, a tissue sample — anything to do with health.
- Lawrence W. Reed, July 29, 1991 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
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