…but from what I’m reading in this Salon piece by Stephen Amidon, there’s a lot that’s right about the quality and egalitarianism of care in the British NHS.

In the piece, the author (an American) describes his experience with the NHS while he was living in London, describing in some detail his experiences with both ends of the spectrum of life: the birth of his daughter and his father-in-law’s final days.

While the state-run hospitals might not have been as flashy and gleaming as what he was used to in the States, the quality of care appears first rate, in many cases providing a greater level of service than what, for example, I’ve experienced here in the US, such as a greater focus on preventive care, regular well-baby visits and prompt care by doctors when necessary; keeping in mind that the visits weren’t made by the parents and children, but by the midwives and doctors in the community.

Sure, there aren’t always private rooms (unless they’re really necessary), and sometimes patients have to wait until those with greater immediate need are treated, but really, this doesn’t really strike me as a bug, but rather, a feature; everyone, regardless of circumstances, gets the same level of care; what the need, when they need it, this fact is apparent to everyone present and nobody feels the need to try and pull rank and jump ahead just because they perceive themselves as superior to the person next to them. The attitude that “we” is at least as important as “I” feeds this kind of system, and it clearly works in Britian (and elsewhere) because of it.

Most of the modern industrial/post industrial world, save the United States, considers health care a basic right of every person, not just a priviledge for those who can afford it. The author calls this phenomenon, evidenced by what he saw with NHS, “common decency”, but you could easily call it “promoting the general welfare”, “caring for ‘the least of these'”, or just to rile some people up, “socialism”, but generally, it’s the feeling that society as a whole will improves when everyone, regardless of circumstance, can have their basic needs net. In the case of health care, most of these nations manage to do things more effectively than the US does, at least when measured in ways like customer satisfaction, cost of overhead, infant mortality and adult life expectancy.

I suspect, for a number of reasons, that Britain’s government-run system isn’t quite right, from a program perspective, for the United States, but I truly believe that if this country experienced a shift in attitude toward a bit more of this concept of “common decency”, I think we’d all get better care than we have now, and the nation, in this and many other ways, would be better for it.