OT: Is it time you get yourselves a National Health Service?
You have immense pride and feel boundless appreciation and protection for the United States Armed Forces — a well-funded organisation with strong central governance, respected across the world, setting the high standard for capability and effectiveness.
Is it now time to create United States Health Forces in the same vein?
(I like that name, by the way, as it signifies a force for good.)
I apologise if I come over as presumptuous and on my high horse here — after all, I am only a god-forsaken Norwegian (where free health care for all seems an obvious birth right), stranded in UK (where the NHS is a source of pride across the political spectrum), looking at USA, slightly aghast:
Norway: 822 tests/million
USA: 26 tests/million
fhi.no
worldometers.info
Setting up a National Health Service not only seems the right thing to do — considering the well-known fact that USA has a fractured, unfair and costly health system with no coherent and cohesive governance — but it also seems downright genius on both sides of the political spectrum. If the Democrats should set up a National Health Service, they would just serve the demands of their voters and strengthen their position. If Republicans did it, it would put the Democrats on the back-foot for decades, while immensely improving the health, prosperity and morale of the public (this is exactly what the Conservatives did here in the UK, by embracing and strengthening the NHS rather than dismantling it — the NHS is now a national treasure).
PS. The Gates Foundation recently funded a study of the world's health systems:
"In Japan, [...], the smallest subnational disparity was observed, coming in at a difference of 4.8 from the highest HAQ to the lowest. Then, there’s the US. It has a disparity value more than twice that of Japan’s, which the team tentatively linked to challenges of getting healthcare to everyone that needs it, and – most importantly – economic and healthcare inequality in poorer regions."
iflscience.com
thelancet.com
Take care! |
