British celebrate their health care system in London Olympics Opening Ceremony
The Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics included a visual narrative, highlighting the many accomplishments of the British people over many centuries. The story included a dramatic transition from the agrarian era to the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Then, after a moment marking the two world wars, the ceremony included a segment celebrating the National Health Service (NHS). The British, along with almost every other industrialized country in the world, have a universal health care system, in which care is provided for all, regardless of income. Pictures of the celebration, featuring hospital beds, and thousands of actual doctors and nurses from Great Britain, can be seen above.
The scene may have been a curious sight for many Americans. If the United States hosts another Olympic games it likely will not include a celebration of private insurance, like Aetna, or any public aspects of our system, like Medicare.
The British, however, take a particular pride in their system of socialized medicine. The NHS was created in 1946, in the wake of the devastation left in Great Britain after WWII. The system is paid for mostly through a tax based on a percentage of each individual's income. On average, a Brit pays $3,129 for his health care, in American dollars. In comparison, an average American pays $7,538 for their health care, over twice as much. The British also live longer, on average (79.9 years versus 78.2 years in the United States) and have a better infant mortality rate.
This is not to say that the NHS is perfect, or that there aren't some stories of failure with individual patients just as there are in any large system dealing with over 100 million people.
Still, overall the NHS has a stellar record at providing quality care, at a low cost, for nearly every British citizen. Doctors are not paid as much in the British system, but they still make a large enough income to live comfortably, and they do not have to pay off a mountain of student loans like many doctors in the United States. British citizens do not have to worry about being excluded due to pre-existing condition. They do not have to deal with significant co-pays, deductibles, or limits on their coverage. A British citizen pays about $10 for prescription drugs, regardless of how much the drugs actually cost.
Some have compared Obamacare to the system in Great Britain, but the two systems are very different. In the British system, nearly every aspect is controlled by the government, which allows them to control costs much more effectively. Because of political realities in America, Obamacare was much more of a compromise, keeping many aspects of the private system while also implementing more government controls. Obamacare is expected to slow down the increasing rate of health care costs over time, but it will never provide care for all like the British system, and it will not lower costs down to the British level.
So years from now, we will not see an “Obamacare” celebration in an American Olympic Games. Hopefully, it does not take another world war for the United States to adopt a system similar to the NHS.
Excerpt from the Olympic Ceremony Media Guide
Almost all the volunteer dancers in this segment work for the NHS. The NHS is the institution which more than any other unites our nation. It was founded just after World War II on Aneurin Bevan’s famous principle, ‘No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.’
– More than 1,200 volunteer cast. They’ve been recruited from a range of hospitals all over the country, including the famous children’s hospital at Great Ormond Street here in London.
Britain Loves its National Health? Fox Nation Doesn't Know How to Deal With That
The Olympic opening ceremonies celebrated Britain’s National Health Service as one of the country’s great achievements. Fox News, which reviles “Obamacare” as an evil Commie plot even though it’s a whole lot weaker than Britain’s universal-coverage system, found this somewhere between baffling and horrifying.
The Fox Nation reprinted a piece from the Christian Science Monitor about the sequence in the opening ceremonies that featured hospital beds spelling “NHS,” under the oh-horrors title, "Olympic Opening Ceremony Celebrates Socialized Medicine" (they tried to include the video but the International Olympic Committee has blocked it). Director Danny Boyle, who put the ceremonies together, said, “One of the reasons we put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important the NHS is to everybody in this country. One of the core values of our society is that it doesn't matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care."
But American writers have nothing comparable to the NHS in their country. “Certainly the US equivalent, which would be dancing health insurance corporate executives, was hard to imagine”, jibed the Guardian. (See here) So some were a bit confused. Some, like the CS Monitor, wondered if the hospital beds were a coded message to US viewers.
But not everyone was horrified at the glorification of socialized medicine, even on Fox Nation, and the discussion is pretty lively.
"I was duped" - Brits furious over GOP healthcare claims
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