The Logical Conclusion Politics and progress

Debunking the Healthcare False Dichotomy: USA vs NHS

Q. When do you know you've got an NHS advocate beaten in a health debate?
A. When they bring up the USA.

If there is no better defense of the socialist system than that the USA is worse, then we really are at the point where reform is not only logical but necessary. For a comparatively ridiculous argument, let's consider a reasonable argument we might put forward, and the equivelant argument that the converted use against NHS reform.

"We need to clean up Moss Side in Manchester."
"No, Benghazi is worse."

What, really? So because our system isn't the worst in the world, we shouldn't even consider reforming it? This isn't, of course, what the far-left are proposing. What they suggest is simple, that the only problem with the NHS is that it just isn't funded well enough.

In order for this claim to stand up to scrutiny, there would need to be no other healthcare system in the world which achieves better results with less money than is in the NHS. We already know that healthcare systems which have more spent on them can do significantly better, but in order to convince the NHS advocates, we're going to need to get past the idea that the issue is simply funding, and it goes deeply into inefficiency.