Life expectancy at birth: US 77.2 years: UK 78.5 years.

Infant mortality per 1,000 live births: US 7.0: UK 5.3
Source: OECD in Figures 2005: http://213.253.134.29/oecd/pdfs/browseit/0105061E.PDF

In cost-effective terms, Americans are getting a very bad deal on healthcare. But in Britain, we are concerned that average life expectancy is somewhat lower than in most other west European countries and infant mortality somewhat higher – which only goes to show how bad the US figures are compared with outcomes from healthcare in western Europe. But how does Marx/Marxism help to explain the better outcomes in western Europe compared with the US?

In France, I could drop into any GP’s surgery I happened to walk by for advice and prescriptions. I’d have to pay the GP for the advice and the pharmacist for medications but I could recover most of that from the state, occupational and private insurance. Presumably, the GP and the pharmacist are exacting “surplus value”, as is the company providing healthcare insurance. Even so, average life expectancy at birth is longer in France than in Britain and infant mortality is lower. All very puzzling . . ! Seems to me we ought to be focusing on healthcare outcomes and the comparative costs of attaining the outcomes and leave surplus value for the birds. Besides, whatever happened to the Knightian notion of “profits”?
http://www.econlib.org/library/Knight/knRUP.html

For briefs on the various healthcare systems of a select group of affluent countries, try:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/nhs/index.php

But no-one says that the problem with the NHS is that all its doctors are shite, so your personal good experiences are a straw man.

So you’re happy with your GP. Great. Let’s say you move house to, say, St Albans. Now, it’s not that far, really, and it’s pretty easy to travel from Hertfordshire to London. More to the point, if you’re willing to put up with the inconvenience, surely that’s your decision (as long as you don’t expect your GP to make home visits). And, having moved, you discover that the local GP in St Albans is bloody awful. The cost to the NHS is identical regardless of which GP you register with. According to the NHS, however, which doctor you see is not your decision; it is dependent on your postcode.

In other words, the fact that your experiences are good while others’ are bad is the problem. It’s a lottery. And, unlike in France or Germany or the US, if you’re one of the losers, you’re not allowed to join the winners. You’re just stuck with it.

> I would argue that one who embarks upon a career in healthcare in order to improve the lot of fellow beings is morally superior to one who embarks upon a similar career in order to become wealthy.

So what? If I’m choosing which surgeon should perform my operation, I’ll choose the one with the best performance, not the superior morals. Sometimes, those two are the same. Sometimes not.

janinsanfran,

Come to the UK, get ill, have some treatment, compare. Then see how grateful you are.

Alternatively, look up survival rates and life expectancies for various diseases in the UK and the US. Compare. Then tell us why we should be grateful.

Yes! Yes! we’ve almost made it to a full year of these things! (Actually, would it bethe 52 nd or the 53 rd that marked a year?) Get your niminations in for next week’s to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

Be grateful and fight to improve what you have or we’ll make sure you get ours (which our companies will try to own.)

Ok, never mind then.

Jarndyce,

Looking at my first post, I see I really didn’t answer frmo the angle you were looking for. Pehaps reticence is explained by the fact that healthcare is more open to abuse: the complexity of the information the costumer must deal with and therefore the reliance on the expert who is also providing the product, physicians being in shorter supply than food sources, the huge and sudden costs that can be incurred through healthcare. This makes it easier for someone in a bad spot to really get taken advantage of. Hence introducing the profit motive may seem to open the door to people a lot of that.

*Mutters to self* Honestly, they boast about their book learning but they can’t even string words together properly. It was different in my day – children up chimneys, revolutions in all the European capitals etc etc…

“I am not a Marxist”

— Karl Marx.