We are sometimes told by its defenders that the National Health Service is the envy of the world. Well, I wonder if all those countries yearning for socialised medicine are dreaming of this?
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I used to visit the South of France as a kid and one day, walking down the beach in St Tropez, yours truly, then a pretty wet-behind-the-ears lad from Suffolk, espied a whole row of lovely French women lying on the beach with nary a stitch on. Mon dieu! After my silly childish embarrassment wore off, I thought nothing of it after a while. It appears that for health and fashion reason, though, that the lovelies of Europe are covering up. One of the main factors may be a concern about skin cancer. Also, I notice that in France, a lot of the men and women’s skin gets very lined and aged if they sit out a lot in the sun, so for reasons of vanity or beauty – depending on your point of view – it makes sense to cover up. I have to watch it in the sun as I am pretty fair-skinned. I did sort of half wonder whether any of this story from France has something to do with the large Muslim immigrant population in the South of France that takes a dim view of baring any female flesh at all. It does make one wonder. I hope not. July 31st, 2008 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Last night, flicking through the TV channels after watching Andy Murray get pulverised by Nadal, the muscle-bound Spaniard, in the tennis, I watched in bemused fascination as ITV and the BBC both devoted quite a lot of air time to celebrating – that word was used repeatedly – the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service. There has even been a church service, attended by Prince Charles and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to mark the anniversary of Britain’s monopoly provider of health care, an essentially socialist creation that is hardly emulated anywhere else in the world, and for good reason. None of the major objections to health care that is provided via tax and distributed “free” at the point of use were mentioned. Last night’s stories gave no balancing comments from skeptics or opponents of the NHS to counter the general feel-good presentations. At the Institute of Economic Affairs, here is a rather more sober treatment of the NHS. As the US writer PJ O’Rourke once warned his countrymen about socialised medical care, if you think US private sector healthcare is expensive, just wait until it is “free”. July 3rd, 2008 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a great new book to cheer libertarians as we draw close to the sixtieth anniversary of the National Health Service. Written by the director of Nurses for Reform, Dr. Helen Evans, and published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, ‘Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS?’ not only shows that the country’s top 100 health opinion formers no longer actually believe in nationalised healthcare but, gloriously, this book fundamentally challenges the medical monopoly inherent in all health systems around the world. Citing a huge array of free marketeers the work is awash with glorious quotes like this one from David Friedman:
Quoting our own Brian Micklethwait we again read:
Powerfully, he concludes:
Evans’s book is a must read for libertarians. It is also a tonic for the period of NHS propaganda we will no doubt endure over the next couple of weeks. June 23rd, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Looking for a real boost in the morning? Someday you may be able to do better than coffee. According to New Scientist (via the Foresight Institute):
I can hardly begin to imagine the applications. With this technique you could correct chronic genetically caused disorders. It makes drugs old hat. You could boost athletic performance from inside the cell and really give the luddite sports crowd something to worry about. Imagine the battlefield applications! It could keep the 21st century soldier alert despite little sleep; alive when injured; fed from sunlight or other external energy sources and performance enhanced when under threat. June 12th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over at ConservativeHome there’s a survey suggesting the social conservatives are doing the Guardian’s work for it by trying to make one’s position on abortion a party-political issue in Britain. The next generation of Conservative MPs support a lower time limit for abortions says an email questionnaire to 225 candidates, answered by just under half. I’m as irritated by this sort of spinning of some very doubtful evidence as I am by the contrary stuff – to the same effect – from the Guardian, which has recently started to suggest (as a measure of its desperation) that no-one who favours abortion choice should vote Conservative. What really winds me up, though, is the mendacious presentation of their position by the proponents of this staged debate. The legal position of abortion in Britain is the sort of muddy compromise people with a clear ideas about the question are quite right to resent. But the approach of many abortion-banners (as they actually are) is anything but frank, and reminiscent of the step-by-step strategy of the anti-smoking lobby. For every principled (usually religiously principled) pro-lifer, there is someone who secretly shares their conviction, but makes the case for just a little cut in the time-limit now “because science tells us that babies of that age can now survive outside the womb”. It’s nonsense. Without a lot of help a two-year-old can’t survive outside the womb. And the prospect of those few born at the limit of current paediatric technology surviving uncrippled to live a normal life is tiny even with a massive input of medical and nursing resources. But worse, it is mendacious nonsense – they don’t care about “viability” in the slightest. What they want is a plausible excuse to cut the availability of abortion just a bit. So I have a test to flush them out. It is provided by that ghastly muddy compromise. Britain doesn’t in law permit women to choose abortion, unlike most rich countries. It is an extraordinary construct of bureaucratic paternalism. What British (mainland) law does is to permit pregnant women to petition doctors to give them permission to abort on the grounds that it will be bad for their well-being to carry the baby to term. With two doctors assenting to this opinion in writing (that is, as the doctors’ professional opinion – the woman’s view doesn’t matter in law), you may have an abortion. Where the ‘time-limit’ comes in is that those two doctors can only approve an abortion to preserving the patient’s social or mental well-being before a certain point. After that terminations may only occur where there is a substantial risk to life or health, or in cases of severe foetal abnormality. So in practice, in the UK you have a choice only if you approach the right doctor armed with the right argument. A naive or poorly educated, woman who seeks help from her GP when the GP happens to oppose abortion, or who mistakenly calls a pro-life charity canvassing itself as offering help to the unexpectedly pregnant (as opposed to one of the pro-choice groups who do the same thing) may never find out how to get an abortion, or at least not until it is too late. The late abortions themselves aren’t occuring as a lifestyle choice – which is another mendacious narrative element in the pseudo-debate. My test is this: Next time anyone says they want the time-limit for abortion cut to because “science shows” the baby can survive outside the womb after X weeks. Say, “And of course you support changing the law to allow abortion on demand before that date, don’t you?” Then watch them flounder. June 7th, 2008 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am interested in this story as I am one of many people for whom the hopefully sunnier weather of summer is accompanied by the irritation of hayfever. I do not suffer from it as badly as when I was a child but it is still unpleasant sometimes. I once played in a cricket match and my symptoms – streaming eyes and sneezing – got so bad that I could hardly continue to play the game. Anyway, it may be soon be possible to significantly nail the problem with a vaccine. June 5th, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Belatedly, I joined the craze and had a go on one of my friend’s Wii games the other weekend. Terrific stuff: I played the golf, tennis, ten-pin bowling and shooter games. Bloody marvellous. You do need to get a large-enough television to make it work; unfortunately, I don’t really want to mess up my sitting room by putting a huge plasma screen on the wall, but some of my friends seem to be less squeamish. The main downside, I find, is that if you are playing this game and have not stretched and warmed up properly first, you can actually do a bit of damage. The next morning, when I woke up, the left side of my back was quite painful. This is what happens to a 41-year-old wealth management geek who has not spent enough time doing sport for real. Time to turn off the technology and put on the training shoes. A link to some Wii-related injuries. I wait for the first politician to try and bleat about the “Wii menace”. April 21st, 2008 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Health care policy is a major issue in the Democratic Party’s choice of a presidential candidate. The final debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in Ohio, spent a reported 15 minutes on it. Yet the mainstream news media in the United States consistently report that there are only very minor differences between the positions of the two candidates. Given this, the argument looks like little more than semantic quibbling over the meaning of the word “universal,” all too typical of Clinton’s struggle to contest Obama’s unexpected rivalry for the nomination. But the mainstream news media have it wrong. There is, in fact, a vitally important difference between the two positions, though one that their worldview makes them ill equipped to recognize. The difference is that Clinton would compel everyone to purchase health insurance; Obama would not. The standard label for this difference in health policy debates is “mandate,” for what Clinton wants. Clinton has been evasive about exactly how she would compel the purchase of insurance – which is not surprising, as talking about punishing voters is not a good selling point in an election. The state of Massachusetts, which has a mandate, imposes fines on adults who do not have health insurance. Clinton has not talked about fines, but has suggested garnishing wages or making enrollment compulsory on admission to any hospital. Of course, Clinton promises to make health insurance affordable to everyone, through subsidies and through massive new regulation of the insurance industry. So does Obama. But what if their plans do not work out? Under Obama’s plan, adults who thought even subsidized health insurance cost more than they could pay would remain uninsured, and at least be no worse off. Under Clinton’s plan, they would be forced to sign up, or penalized for not doing so – and either way they would be hurt. And given that Clinton predicts that fifteen million Americans would remain uncovered under Obama’s voluntary plan, it seems that she anticipates that fifteen million people would have to be hurt financially to make her plan viable – or, perhaps, simply to justify her in calling it “universal.” → Continue reading: Health care, class conflict, and the Democratic Party March 2nd, 2008 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
What is innovation? A difficult question but would this effort modestly fit?
Pictures are added in a tasteful jade green. Is this really what our taxes should be spent on? February 24th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
This article is in the LA Times titled Doctors balk at request for data:
Firstly all aspects of medical care, including insurance, are regulated to bits in the United States (especially in California), and it is the government regulations and subsidy programs (such as Medicare and Medicaid – but in recent years SCHIP as well) that are at the root of the high price of medical cover. But to turn to the specific question: If someone lies about their medical history when filling out a contract, in order to get less expensive medical cover, they are guilty of fraud. In an alternative world, which I am not saying I would support, they would not only be dropped by their insurance company when their fraud was exposed – they would also be prosecuted. Of course, in our world, they will not be prosecuted and would not be convicted if they were prosecuted. It is much the same with all the political talk about “fraudulent lending” in the mortgage market. There has been vastly more fraudulent borrowing, but I doubt that the vast number of people who lied on their mortgage applications (for example claiming to have an income much greater than they really have) will be prosecuted. However, in an alternative world (which, again, I am not saying I support) prosecution and conviction would solve the problems of customers guilty of fraud – medical cover and a roof over their heads. Prison provides both. February 13th, 2008 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Considering how many health-scare news items there are these days, it makes me want to smile in a wry way when I also read about the supposed problems caused by an ageing, greying, population. The first and obvious question is: if we are all at such risk from obesity, drugs, booze, stress, pollution or the angst of watching Jonathan Ross, why are we living so much longer than our parents or grandparents? If this is what happens when the sky is supposedly always about to fall in, then what must a healthy population be like? And yet there is something in the human psyche, or our culture, that rebels against the happy prospect of a longer life. We are told, or at least have until recently accepted, that three-score years and ten is Man’s rightful due (perhaps a tad longer for women); it is almost a hangover from religion to believe that it is impious, even blasphemous, to want to live for much longer. Andrew O’Hagan, writing in the Daily Telegraph today in a moan about how the elderly are treated in Britain – a valid subject – makes this point:
I don’t really know how death, or its inevitability, adds to one’s individuality. I think I know what O’Hagan is trying to say: We are unique, precisely because we are mortal. We cannot be replaced, or copied. The trouble, though, is that I don’t see how one’s uniqueness is somehow reduced by living for 200 years rather than say, 100, or 50, or 30. Were the ancient Romans – average lifespan about 35 – more individualistic and unique than a 21st Century Brit? How on earth can one measure this? Also, the desire to keep the Grim Reaper at bay surely attests to a love of life, not a denial of its value; if one believed in a craven acceptance of the inevitable, then why do we have doctors and hospitals?. I value my life rather a lot and am in no hurry to see my hair go all grey, my face resemble tree bark, and my limbs to seize up. Sorry, Mr O’Hagan, but I’d rather not suffer that fate any time soon. I go to the gym and try to keep fit despite my enjoyment of red wine. I have not signed up for cryonic suspension or anything like that but I keep an eye on life extension research and have been greatly impressed by the work of people such as Aubrey de Grey, among others. (Don’t be put off by the immense beard, he’s not a nutter). I lost a good friend and intellectual mentor, Chris Tame, nearly two years ago to the horror of bone cancer – he was in his mid-50s – and I am pretty sure this most unique of people could and should have been around for many more decades among us. (I particularly miss his outrageous jokes). I remain to be convinced of the idea that to value one’s life, it must be short, or that we should resign ourselves to it meekly. Meekness did not build the space rocket, the Aston Martin DB9 or even produce modern dental surgery. Update: Glenn Reynolds has interesting thoughts on this subject. He’s been writing on this for some time. Ronald Bailey, whom I met over a year ago during a book tour of London, is also well worth reading on this and related topics. I read this Peter Hamilton novel which touches on rejuvination; it is not one of his best tales, unfortunately (the Amazon.co.uk book reviews are not very flattering). February 12th, 2008 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
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