I’ve lived the difference between US and UK health care. Here’s what I learned (opinion)

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Compare that to another freak accident I had while living in Boston in my 20s. I spilled a large cup of hot tea on myself, suffered second degree scald burns, and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. In the pain and chaos of the ER admission, I accidentally put my primary insurance down as my secondary and vice versa. It took me the better part of six months to sort out the ensuing paperwork and billing confusion, and even with two policies, I still paid several hundred dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.

With debate raging in the US among Democrats about whether to push for a government health care system such as Medicare for All, there is no doubt in my mind that the NHS single-payer health care system is superior to the American system of private insurance. As someone who suffers from chronic illness, is incredibly clumsy and accident-prone, and has two young children, I spend an inordinate amount of time in doctors’ offices and hospitals. When my family is in our home in York, England, our health care is paid for principally through direct taxation, and we have zero out of pocket costs. In contrast, when we are in the US, we are on my employer-based insurance plan. After years with one provider, rising costs pushed the premiums alone to above 10% of my gross salary for the family plan, and I recently opted to switch to a new provider, whose premiums are a more modest but still eye-watering 7% of my salary. I have had to switch our family doctor and specialists, with the attendant hassle of applying to have our medical records released and transferred to our new providers. In addition to my premiums, both plans include significant co-pays, although my new provider does not have a deductible.

In Britain, I am not entitled to the annual well patient and women’s health check-ups that Americans can now receive without a co-pay or deductible thanks to the Affordable Care Act. As an asthma sufferer, I do, however, have regular annual reviews of my condition. When one of my children becomes ill, I am usually able to receive same-day treatment in both countries, although in both cases this involves showing up early for the urgent care clinic.

The comparative ease and security of the NHS is why the system retains such high levels of support from the British public, despite frustrations with wait times and other aspects of service provision. A recent poll found that 77% of respondents felt that “the NHS is crucial to British society and we must do everything we can to maintain it,” and nearly 90% agreed that that the NHS should be free at the point of delivery, provide a comprehensive service available to everyone, and be primarily funded through taxation. Britons’ affection for their NHS was dramatically enacted in Danny Boyle’s 2012 Olympic opening ceremony extravaganza.

Yet, while I share my adopted countrymen’s support for the NHS, I can see almost no chance of America adopting a single-payer health care system of the kind described by Sens. Sanders and Warren any time soon. Sanders, Warren and other single-payer advocates not only face a strong and entrenched adversary in the American insurance industry, they also lack the broad public support for reform which characterized post-WWII Britain.

That broad public support for reform was crucial. Britain’s NHS system was very nearly defeated by opposing interests when it was introduced in the 1940s. It was initially opposed by the municipal and voluntary authorities, who controlled the 3,000 hospitals which Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan sought to bring under national administration, by the various Royal Colleges of surgeons and specialists, and by British Medical Association (BMA), the professional body representing the vast majority of the nation’s general practitioners, who stood to lose control of their private practices and become state employees.

At a meeting of doctors following the publication of Bevan’s proposals in January 1946, one physician claimed that “This Bill is strongly suggestive of the Hitlerite regime now being destroyed in Germany,” and another described the proposed nationalization of the hospitals as “the greatest seizure of property since Henry VIII confiscated the monasteries.” The BMA hostility persisted through rounds of negotiations lasting two years. Less than six months before the bill was set to come into effect on July 5, 1948, the BMA’s membership voted by a margin of 8 to 1 against the NHS, sparking serious fears within the government that GPs would refuse to come on board, effectively scuppering the NHS.

Bevan insisted that he would not cave but he did have to make several costly concessions to bring the doctors on board. First, he cleaved off the specialists (who were closely tied to the hospitals), by promising them that, if they signed on, they could continue to treat private patients in NHS-run hospitals in addition to their NHS patients, whom they would be paid to treat on a fee-for-service basis. Then, he offered the general practitioners a generous buyout to give up their stake in their private practices (effectively purchasing their patient lists), if they came on board. And finally, he promised them that the government would not be able to compel them to become fully salaried employees of the state without the passage of new legislation.

At the same time that Bevan offered the carrot of economic concessions, he also wielded the stick of public opinion against the doctors. Speaking in the House of Commons in February 1948, Bevan positioned single-payer healthcare as an issue of middle class survival, in language whose substance, if not its style, would not sound out of place in a 2020 Democratic primary debate: “Consider that social class which is called the “middle class.” Their entrance into the scheme, and their having a free doctor and a free hospital service, is emancipation for many of them. There is nothing that destroys the family budget of the professional worker more than heavy hospital bills and doctors’ bills.”

Bevan spoke for a public exceptionally united in support of an expanded state welfare policy as a result of the socially unifying experience of World War II. Fear of public backlash combined with economic incentives ultimately brought the medical establishment to heel.

Many were shocked when Bevan succeeded, but the BMA was arguably a less formidable threat to reform then than the American insurance industry is now. Insurance companies stand to be the biggest losers from a switch to single-payer health care, which seeks to achieve economies in large part through cutting out the profit-making middle man. As Elizabeth Warren noted in last Tuesday’s debate, US insurance companies reported $23 billion in profits last year. And the insurance lobby is determined to protect its position. That is why insurance companies are major donors in both state and federal election campaigns. The insurance industry has put massive resources into ensuring continued public and political opposition to the introduction of a single-payer system.

It’s possible that, if Americans were presented with an arguably cheaper and less bureaucratic health care system, they might decide that they liked it and were committed to doing everything they could to maintain it. But given the constellation of political forces in 21st century America, that just isn’t going to happen any time soon.

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