Man vs. Mutt

WSJ ^ | 8/8/09 | THEODORE DALRYMPLE

[dervish]

In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog.

'snip'

Of course, from the point of view of social justice as equality, it wouldn’t really matter whether the treatment meted out to dogs was good or bad, so long as it was equal. And, oddly enough, one of the things about the British National Health Service for human beings that has persuaded the British over its 60 years of existence that it is socially just is the difficulty and unpleasantness it throws in the way of patients, rich and poor alike: for equality has the connotation not only of justice, but of hardship and suffering. And, as everyone knows, it is easier to spread hardship equally than to disseminate blessings equally.

'snip'

The federal government should concern itself very little in health care arrangements, and leave it almost entirely to the states. I don’t want to provoke a new war of secession but surely this is a matter of states’ rights.

'snip'

And what I want, at least for that part of my time that I spend in England, is to be a dog. I also want, wherever I am, the Americans to go on paying for the great majority of the world’s progress in medical research and technological innovation by the preposterous expense of their system: for it is a truth universally acknowledged that American clinical research has long reigned supreme, so overall, the American health-care system must have been doing something right. The rest of the world soon adopts the progress, without the pain of having had to pay for it.

[dervish]

Across the Channel, there is very little that can be said in favor of a health system which is the most ideologically egalitarian in the western world. It supposedly allots health care independently of the ability to pay, and solely on the basis of clinical need; but not only are differences in the health of the rich and poor in Britain among the greatest in the western world, they are as great as they were in 1948, when health care was de facto nationalized precisely to bring about equalization. There are parts of Glasgow that have almost Russian levels of premature male death. Britain’s hospitals have vastly higher rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (a measurement of the cleanliness of hospitals) than those of any other European country; and survival rates from cancer and cardiovascular disease are the lowest in the western world, and lower even than among the worst-off Americans.

[Dudoight]

Theodore Dalrymple is so cool. This is a ‘pen name’ for a British psychiatrist. I ran across him years ago. He is great!

[dervish]

I would love to meet him.

He is a hybrid of Krauthammer, also a psychiatrist, and Mark Steyn, acerbic humor. He is a deadly critic of Europe.

[Dudoight]

I like this sentence:

And, as everyone knows, it is easier to spread hardship equally than to disseminate blessings equally.

I was thinking the same thing as to Krauthammer...the Steyn comparison is excellent!

[PLMerite]

“There are parts of Glasgow that have almost Russian levels of premature male death.”

Council estates, crappy weather, alcohol, bad food, downward-spiraling economic standing, other unhealthy lifestyle circumstances. Can’t be good for a person.

[neverdem]

BTTT!

[dervish]

great article on healthcare for your list

[socialismisinsidious]

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