Blame Me if Health Plans Fail, Blair Says
The New York Times
April 21, 2002
By Reuters
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday his government's mission to overhaul public health care was a huge challenge and he would take the blame if it failed.
Opinion polls published Sunday suggested most Britons were ready to pay more for better health treatment.
But they also revealed a widespread belief that Blair had broken an election pledge not to raise income tax...
...Chancellor Gordon Brown hiked taxes last week to pump billions of extra pounds into the ailing National Health Service (NHS).
Wednesday, Brown outlined plans to pour an extra 40 billion pounds ($58 billion) into public health care over the next five years. Most of the money will come from taxes, with a one percentage rise in National Insurance -- a payroll tax -- right up the salary scale being the biggest revenue earner.
Blair has refused to rule out further tax rises but said the changes to the health services were covered by Brown's steps on Wednesday. He dismissed as "nonsense" accusations that his Labor government was returning to a "tax and spend" policy.
<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain-blair.html>http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain-blair.html
Comment: Innumerable models have demonstrated that public funding and public administration can deliver more health services to more people for less money. But public funding has been a major weakness of the existing programs.
In the United States, our system of combining both public and private funding has resulted in the most generous health care funding of all nations, estimated to be 14.7% of our GDP for 2002 (Office of the Actuary of CMS). But we have seen that other nations that have relied on public funding have failed to provide enough resources to assure capacity that would prevent excessive queues for services. The British system has been frozen at 7% of their GDP, primarily because of political resistance to taxes. Apparently the administration of Prime Minister Blair has finally decided to confront the real issue. The National Health Service simply needs more tax revenue.
The lesson for the United States is that we must counter political efforts to isolate the concepts of "taxes" and "government" as if they were topics unrelated to our social needs and desires. Leaving half of our health care system under private funding in the private sector has resulted in the worst inequities in health care of all industrialized nations.
Most Americans do believe that we need greater equities in both access and coverage. The private sector has proven that these goals cannot be achieved without including taxes and the government in the comprehensive design of the system. Whereas other nations are facing the issue of needing more funding, we have already made the decision to devote the resources needed that would fund comprehensive care for everyone.
Let's now define the proper role of government and taxes in a system that actually would provide the universal access and coverage for which we are already paying. Even the political opponents admit that a single payer system would do this. Why do you think they are excluding us from the forums on reform? Simply because the logic of our message is so clear that our voice must be stifled. Thus, the deceptive "tax and spend" rhetoric is being used to dismiss us in our absence.
Let's end these deceptions by adopting more accurate rhetoric such as, "Comprehensive health care for everyone: We're paying for it! Let's have it!"
And then let's carry that message to the nation.