Memo To Michael Moore: Britain is no Role Model

While denouncing America's health care system, Michael Moore lauds Great Britain's free National Health Service (NHS). But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price. After nearly 60 years of attempting to make socialized medicine work, the NHS is in a perilous state:

• There are nearly 1 million British patients on waiting lists for treatment, and 200,000 Brits are waiting merely to get on an NHS waiting list!
• As a result, each year the NHS cancels approximately 100,000 operations because of shortages.
• When patients are finally admitted to state hospitals, more than 10% of them contract infection and illnesses they did not have prior to admittance.
• Many Britons have turned to outside practitioners for treatment, and the private healthcare market has boomed.
• Today, more than 6.5 million people in Great Britain have private medical insurance, and thousands more are self-insured.
• Millions more Britons opt for private dentistry, opthamalics and long-term care.
• The system has barred the purchase of Herceptin, a lifesaving breast-cancer drug.

The U.S. system certainly has its shortfalls, but the solution to America's woes can't be found in the UK - no matter how many movie tickets Moore sells.

Source: from "Memo to Moore: UK no Role Model" by Helen Evans of the Boston Herald, June 27, 2007.