British Conservatives Tangle Over Their National Health Service
British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan appeared on Glenn Beck’s show to opine on ObamaCare. His advice: “Don’t do it.”
He called the NHS “a 60-year failure” and pointed out that Britain had adopted its health care system in the midst of World War II when rationing was in vogue — not only for health care, but for food and gasoline. That America was considering a move towards socialized medicine in peacetime was unbelievable to Hannan.
Across the pond, the reaction from Conservative Party leadership was chilly, to say the least. Conservative leader David Cameron called Hannan “eccentric” and stated that “’no one should be in any doubt, for the Conservative Party, the NHS is our number one priority.” Meanwhile, critics on the left were far less kind, calling Hannan “unpatriotic.”
Now one can wonder what has happened to Great Britain to turn it into a nation where loving one’s country requires loving every bureaucracy that operates within it. However, there’s a larger scope to this row. Cameron and Hannan ultimately represent two archetypal visions of conservatism that are in conflict not only in Britain, but in the United States as well.
Hannan favors ending the National Health Service and creating a system of private accounts. The idea may seem like common sense to American conservatives, but Britain’s National Health Service is the third largest employer on the face of the Earth. That Hannan believes such a bureaucracy should be dismantled is a radical concept.
However, Cameron sees that the Conservative Party’s easiest path to victory in the next election is to accept the status quo regarding the National Health Service. And anyone who thinks otherwise is, at best, “eccentric.”
Thus, we see the fundamental conflict within conservatism on either side of the Atlantic. Hannan and those who identify with Hannan-style conservatism have a clear vision of what government should be like, what functions it should have, and what it shouldn’t do. Cameron conservatives are pragmatists who seek to keep the world the way it is. They’ll oppose the introduction of bad government programs, however once those bad government programs are established, they will accept them as a fact of life and even defend them.
If you need evidence of this, look no further than the U.S. Department of Education, a gift from the Carter administration. Ronald Reagan opposed it, as did the GOP platform. Everything critics said about the Department of Education at the time it was created was correct. In fact, in 1994 the GOP promised to eliminate the Department of Education. However, due to repeated failures at the 2000 Republican Convention, opposition to the existence of the Department of Education was pulled from the Republican Party platform. In 2008, even Ron Paul was silent about getting rid of the Department of Education even though it still does not educate children after thirty years of existence. Its only useful function is to release statistics throughout the year that indicate its total lack of effectiveness.
Dont make the mistake of equating members of the British Conservative Party with what American’s would call Conservatives . Winston Churchill’s they most certainly are not they are Nu Labour lite more like Neville Chamberlain than anything else. The UK has been taken over by the product of a University system which has been churning out anti American, Islamophile, antisemitic, left wing moonbats since the 60′s. The MSM especially the BBC is full of them along with feminists gays and lesbians and ALL mainstream Political parties are merely variations on the PC,MC, left wing, moonbat, ‘yuman rites spouting’, Green NAZI anti American, Islamophile, antisemitic, anti Israel ‘libtard’ theme.
So any utterances they make and any disagreements they may have with each other are only about who hates America and Israel most and loves Islam best and should be judged in that light. Trust me the whole lot are useless why do you think so many Brits are quitting the sinking ship. It cant be saved its gone.
Great article, Mr. Graham.
Bravo to Mr. Hannan (as usual) and to the visionary conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. I salute them for having the courage to want to defeat the elitist, far-left agenda that aims to dismantle our freedoms, prosperity and rights.
Obama’s and the liberals’ allegiance to self-interest, immorality, fear-mongering thuggery and socialist values including the distribution of wealth, will lead our great nation to total chaos, infighting even amongst family members and ruin.
Terrific article Mr. Graham. Visionary Conservative is a great name and should be used for Conservatives that reject the GOP as it is now lead. Keep up the good work!
Medicare and Medicaid are breaking the federal government and many state budgets are straining from the weight of their Medicaid payments. Massachusetts and Hawaii have unsustainable government health systems. But rather than calling for cut backs on these programs, conservatives are on the defensive, just trying to prevent a total nationalization of health care. Liberals are often able to win the debate despite the fact that government simply doesn’t work as well as free markets to provide health care or any other good or service. Americans used to have a bias against government and for freedom; now it’s just the opposite. Until we can make inroads into the fundamental ideas that government helps people and freedom is an excuse for excess, we won’t be able to abolish the Dept. of Education or roll back government at any level. The problem is fundamental. Until the public bias is in favor of liberty again, we’ll keep getting elected leaders like Obama who will expand government control at every opportunity.
Wise up guys. David “boy toy” Cameron is NOT conservative. He represents torries but is in favor of the socialist nanny state, defends the “indefensible” National Health Service, loves global warming and the “cap and tax crap” that goes with it, and loves having the EU dictate most of the laws that the UK lives by right down to regulating their wheelie bin pickups. He is not a conservative in any real sense. Edmund Burke would not know him that is for sure. A UK Tory is a LIBERAL on the USA scale. That is the truth of it. He is not looking to upset any apple carts, no big ideas out of this guy. He just wants to waltz in on the coattails of the labour party debacle. That is all it will take and that is all he will do.
David Cameron is a Conservative like David Brooks is a Conservative.
Listen to what we Brits tell you Americans don’t fall for the Conservative label the Tories have that all it is a label. They are almost as far left as the Labour ‘numbties’ and so close in policies and attitude you will never know the difference . That is the real problem in UK there is no alternative and is one more reason why the GOP would be making a colossal mistake to try and become DEMS Mk2 . After all if you are a demented enough ‘libtard’ why go for # 2 when you can have left wing moonbat #1.
The reason Dan is an MEP instead of rushing back to become an MP for the next election is that he is not really on the same page as Cameron & Co. Dan Hannan is a proper conservative who views represent the grassroots of the Conservative Party far more than the current leadership. A good example of this is Donal Blaney, who lays out his stance against progressivism pretty clearly in the linked post.
It is right to urge caution when assuming that the Conservative Party (at least its MPs) are like Hannan. Besides, Douglas Carswell MP (who I have interviewed for PJM), there are few like Hannan in Parliament.
The central issue is, “pragmatists who seek to keep the world the way it is”
Given the list of things wrong with the world the way it is today, why defend the status quo?
As for what Andrew Ian Dodge said in point #8, I would modify the statement to this: there are few like Hannan in Parliament who take public stances like Hannan.
I’m in Canada, and there are people in the governing caucus who see the folly of the leadership, but they do not want to point to the uncomfortable truth that the only difference between this government and its predecessors
is this: less open scandal.
When the budget is written and then passed, either party could have written it.
So, with all due respect Mr. Dodge, the battle is not just fought in the fringes.
One other thing, Sarah Palin champions visionary conservatism. Whereas the rest of the crowd champions status quo conservatism. Is it clearer now why I call Daniel Hannan the standard for English speaking law makers whose politics is right of centre?
There’s a good reason why Daniel Hannan’s remarks got a chilly reception in Britain (actually that’s putting it mildly).
The vast majority of Brits – on all sides of the political spectrum – are staunch supporters of a system that gives us generally excellent care for relatively low cost. The proportion of GDP spent on healthcare in the UK is about half that of the US – despite the fact that Brits enjoy a genuinely universal service, free to all at the point of use, which helps them to live longer than Americans on average and to have a much lower child mortality rate. For most of us, the idea of moving to the huge costs and rampant insecurity of the US system is just laughable.
My own experience of the British national heath service has been extremely good, and several members of my family owe their lives to prompt, expert and well-resourced treatment.
We have high expectations of the NHS, and are well aware that it is far from perfect – after all, we pay for it out of our tax. That’s one reason why any problems that NHS users experience tend to make big news in the UK, (while at the same time providing ammunition for people for whom the idea of a genuinely universal public health service is ideological anathema).
But these problems are far from typical, and have been blown out of all proportion in the debate over US health reform. In exchange for fawning treatment from right-wing talkshow hosts in the US, Daniel Hannan has chosen to participate in this ugly and deeply dishonest process of slandering a system that, on the whole, serves British people extremely well. Cameron is well aware of the anger this has caused, and rightly worried that this could lose his party a lot of votes. That’s why he’s dosowned Hannan’s remarks.
Of course, the American people are best placed to decide how (or whether) to improve their present healthcare arrangements. But I hope that in doing so they will not be swayed by ideolgically motivated misrepresentations of what happens in other countries.
Let the defenders of the NHS, the Canadian health care system, and what Agent Zero and his zombies are peddling, tackle this: do any of their proposals, or systems, have more than a snowball’s chance in hades of actually delivering services on a time line that medical science says ought to be the case, without bankrupting the country.
A lot of it has to do when care is delivered.
Plus, there is this by Mark Steyn:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/obama-percent-sign-2536772-president-government
Guess that terrorist declined to continue his cancer treatment in Scotland the Brave.
The US Department of Education has an analog in the California Energy Commission. The DoE doesn’t educate and the CEC doesn’t make energy.
I’m not saying that there is not scope for government activity but it must be only those things that can only be done by government and that increase the productivity of the non-government actors.
Of course, the American people are best placed to decide how (or whether) to improve their present healthcare arrangements. But I hope that in doing so they will not be swayed by ideolgically motivated misrepresentations of what happens in other countries.
Well put sir and how very profound.
One of Europe’s biggest problems is that “Reaganite” conservatives, or as the author calls them “visionary” conservatives are labeled “far-right” in the press and by their enemies. I have an aquaintance in the Belgian Parliament, he’s a Reaganite, loves PJ O’Rourke, yet is stuck in the VB, because there’s a dearth of true conservative parties in Belgium. In Britain, how can a Reaganite remain a torry, and not go to the IP? It’s a sorry state across the pond. Free market parties aren’t free market, conservative parties aren’t conservative. If I could scream like Howard Dean I would…..
Peter Montbriand, then shine the light on the intellectual poverty of those who refer to Visionary Conservatives as far right.
There are objective truths communicated via ethics, and those listed above say that isn’t the case, for they are simply sentimentalities. Start there, and then inspect them into smithereens, because that is what they deserve.