Note to Britain: You Can Have Your NHS
As expected, the American press has heavily covered President Trump’s visit to Europe, including his time spent in Great Britain. But a row (that’s British for “argument”) that has gone under-reported on this side of the Atlantic also holds major implications for American patients.
Based on comments the President made earlier in the week, British politicians now believe they need to protect the country’s National Health Service (NHS) from “privatization” at the hands of American corporations. But even as they do so, another controversy—about the ways in which Britain denies life-saving treatments to patients, solely on cost grounds—illustrates the problems with socialized medicine, which the left wants to export to the United States.
Concern about Trade Agreements
During a press conference in London Tuesday, a British reporter questioned Trump about a post-Brexit trade deal between the U.S. and Britain. The reporter specifically asked whether “the entire economy needs to be on the table” in those discussions, “including the NHS.” Trump responded that “everything with a trade deal is on the table.”
Those comments—which Trump later attempted to walk back—prompted outrage that Britain’s “beloved” NHS was at risk. British politicians across parties raised concern that American companies could receive NHS contracts (even though subsidiaries of U.S. corporations have already done so), or that a free trade agreement could supersede legislative efforts by Parliament to prohibit additional private contracting within the health service.
The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock—an announced candidate in the race to succeed Theresa May as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister—epitomized the sentiments, claiming that “the NHS
NHS Denying Patients Care
The controversy continued at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons Wednesday. In that hourlong session, no fewer than five questions asked whether the NHS was “for sale,” or some variation thereof. But the sixth NHS-related question, by Labour MP Karl Turner, proved the most revealing:
Twelve months ago, the Prime Minister told this House that she wanted a speedy resolution to the funding row between NHS England and Vertex regarding the drug Orkambi to treat cystic fibrosis. My seven-year-old constituent Oliver Ward wrote to the Prime Minister recently asking what progress she has made. Could the Minister please give Oliver some good news and tell him that he need not get up every day worrying about this terrible injustice?
Turner’s question referred to Orkambi, a drug that could help thousands of British patients currently suffering from cystic fibrosis. But the NHS refuses to pay for the drug—not because it does not work, but because it does not meet cost thresholds that government bureaucrats have set.
Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence decided in 2016 that the NHS would not pay for Orkambi at the price set by its manufacturer. For the three years since, British patients have not found that decision very NICE at all.
A Precursor of an American Single-Payer System?
Unfortunately, however, liberals want to export the British model of rationing health care on cost grounds to the United States. Recall President Obama’s comments about the issue a decade ago:
The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here….There is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place.
Months after those comments, the New York Times ran an article, entitled “Why We Must Ration Health Care,” that argued for bringing a British-style rationing model to our shores.
This prevailing mentality among intellectual elites explains why neither the House nor Senate single-payer bills prohibit a government-run health plan from implementing cost-effectiveness research. In fact, the House bill explicitly provides for cost-effectiveness research as a method of determining drug prices, because most liberals believe that bureaucrats can and should have the power to restrict access to care on cost grounds. Most Americans, on the other hand, would strongly object to this rationing of care.
As for British politicians saying the NHS “isn’t for sale,” I could not care less—I wouldn’t want to buy it even if it were. The American health care system has its flaws, to be sure, but I have little interest in creating a system where government bureaucrats have near-total control over patients’ medical decisions, and use that power to deny access to life-saving care. I think most Americans would agree.
This post was originally published at The Federalist.