The NHS Controversy
August 16, 2009 by Ken
Filed under The Great British Media, Westminster
There are a few different ways of approaching this:
What did Hannan actually say? Was he suggesting abolishing the NHS or was he saying to the Americans, do not introduce the particular British system of heath care?
Hannan said in his column in the Telegraph:
“There is a difference between saying that the US shouldn’t adopt the British model and saying that Britain should adopt the American model as Peter Mandelson seems fatuously to be claiming.”
“No one I know wants a system where the poor go untended. Nor will you find such a system outside the Third World: it really isn’t a British peculiarity.”
“If you want to go in for shorthand categorisation by country, the model I’ve been pushing for is one of personal healthcare accounts, a system most closely approximated in Singapore, whose people enjoy a higher level of healthcare than Britons do while paying considerably less for it.”
Is no one allowed to actually question the British NHS without being deemed beyond the pale?
This is a typical Labour party spin and misinformation story that is some weeks old in any case and has been resurrected and some believe conducted by Mandelson to combat the Tories lead in the polls.
Labour wants to make lies about Conservative attitudes to the NHS central to the election and is trying to create the stories around this theme.
They are pulling out all the stops against Dan Hannan. Their websites condemn, and they are using welovethenhs to build the story.
Labour are trying to spin a basic lie – and that is a Conservative government would dismantle the NHS and Labour would not – this rather ignores the moves already made by this government towards privatisation of the NHS.
What they are also doing is to conceal the fact that both Labour and Conservative will be expected to follow the lead of the EU health policies and strategies, and its commitment at asset unbundling and largely universal provision of social benefits across the EU.
The question that should be asked is not will the Conservatives dismantle the NHS but can it survive in its present form in a new European theatre.
