The Right to Steal
In one of the most cynical moves I’ve seen in politics, the dying UK Labour government is now promoting the idea that people have a “right” to private health care if they can’t get seen on the National Health within 18 weeks. This is the moral equivalent of saying that I have a right to steal from you if I can’t afford a wide-screen TV. It is light-years away from National’s proposal to use the excess capacity in the private hospitals for elective surgery. This is an actual legal “right” to access private healthcare if the NHS can’t manage. This is not a temporary solution to fill in while new state capacity is developed, it is a free-for-all lolly-scramble that the Labour government can’t possibly afford. It is not a careful part of a balanced health budget but a quick bolt-on that is totally un-costed and unfunded. It sounds suspiciously like some of NZ Labour’s promises just before the last election.
Birds of a feather, steal together.
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Nov 10 09 11:21 pm
Sorry, don’t get it.
Are they suggesting that they won’t pay for that service – that the private hospital has to offer it free? Or that the government will pay? If the latter, how is it stealing? Surely the private hospitals would be jumping for joy?
Is the stealing you refer to stealing from taxpayers – i.e. forcing them to pay for something that a decent hospital system (i.e. something other than the NHS) might have already provided?
Nov 10 09 11:48 pm
PaulL:
Yes. It is stealing money from taxpayers to pay for the equivalent of a private medical insurance policy. If this was a temporary measure which the issue was being addressed, I would not have a problem with it, but it is being presented as some sort of obscene “right”.
Perhaps I am being too harsh about the issue, but the language and attitude towards the taxpayer, at a time when Britain is plunged into debt, simply appals me.
Nov 11 09 9:29 am
Obama should take note as this is an implicit admission, by one of the most Socialist of governments, that state-run healthcare does not work as it should.