President Ronald Reagan once said “federal programs are the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this Earth.” There is a timely reminder of Reagan’s maxim in the weekend’s headlines from across the Big Pond in Britain, where Tory leader David Cameron went out of his way to reassure voters there that he and his party are just as committed to defending the National Health Service as the Labor Party. “No one should be in any doubt, for the Conservative Party, the NHS is our number one priority,” Cameron told the Daily Mail Online. Cameron was reacting to comments by Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament, during his recent U.S. tour.
So British voters have little hope that a new Tory government will mean an end of the long lines waiting to see a doctor, or to get a critically needed treatment for dread diseases like breast cancer. Britons have lived under the NHS for 60 years, and the results are there for the world to see. Breast cancer mortality rates are 88 percent higher in Britain than in the U.S., while prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher there than here, and the colorectal cancer mortality rate among British men and women is about 40 percent higher than here in the U.S.
No wonder Hannan told Americans in a series of television interviews and speeches that we should avoid a British-type government-run health care system. Hannan called the NHS a “60-year mistake,” and encouraged Americans to “ponder our example and tremble.” Asked on Fox News his opinion of President Barack Obama’s government-option health care reform proposal, Hannan said: “I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system.”
It turns out that Hannan is not alone in Britain, either. The Daily Mail Online reports that Roger Helmer, another Tory member of the European Parliament, said Hannan has “done us a service” by speaking out critically on the NHS. “If the Americans came to me and said would you recommend us taking up a system just like the British NHS, I think I would have to say ‘No,’ ” Helmer said.
The lesson for the GOP is clear: Just as Social Security became the “third rail” of American politics, and thus seemingly immune to reform despite its approaching bankruptcy, government-run health care long ago became untouchable in Britain. All Republicans and independent Democrats in Congress must do everything possible to prevent Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from bringing Britain’s long waiting lines and high mortality rates to America.
