Are we witnessing the Americanisation of the NHS?

 

I recently watched an interview with Mark Lawson and the American horror writer Stephen King. The author, who wrote among other things, The Green Mile and The Shining, talked about his early life and I was struck by a remark that he made about healthcare in the U.S.

Before he became a successful author, King described the worry that he and his wife Tabitha had when it came to buying medication required for a sick child. He said the couple often struggled to find the money to buy the child's medicine.

We complain about the cost of a prescription charge of £9.35 per item, but in the U.S., more than 1 in 5 American adults cannot afford prescription drugs. Failure to pay medical bills, is also one of the biggest causes of middle class bankruptcy in the U.S.

In 2018, Donald Trump described Britain's healthcare system as "broke and not working." We all know that the NHS is facing unprecedented difficulties, but I wouldn't trade it in, for an American style health system, where a staggering 46 million U.S. citizens, nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population, cannot afford necessary healthcare services.

Although she never said it publicly, the former Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, favoured introducing an American system of health care in Britain, but she was told that it would be tantamount to committing electoral suicide to say so. Nevertheless, the American healthcare industry has long had it sights on cashing in on the wave of privatisations and outsourcing within the NHS.

Labour's Shadow Health Minister, Wes Streeting, is in favour of more private sector involvement in Britain's healthcare system. In January 2022, he accepted a £15,000 donation from the hedge fund dealer, John Armitage, who owns Egerton Capital, which owns shares worth £834m, in the the U.S. health corporation UnitedHealth.