Free healthcare brings out the worst in people

The U.K. Telegraph reports:

After 30 years of medical service to our neighbourhood and leadership of the local health centre, my doctor is retiring at the end of this month. On account of his age? I suppose so, though lately I have diagnosed just a hint of weariness in him with the ways of our National Health Service.

All the years I have known him, my doctor has been a strong supporter of the NHS.


It struck me that a young nurse he sent to take a blood test came near the mark when she said: "The assembly line is damaging care." We should not delude ourselves. The obsession with targets and the enforcers appointed to set and monitor them are not all that different from systems in the old Soviet Union. "Tony wants it" sounds more emollient than "Stalin demands it", but the outcome to those working in the wards is much the same.

Socialism is socialism.