Friday, May 08, 2015

England's National Health Service Runs On Profits

On Twitter, one of the sports writers from England I follow led me to a tweet I can no longer find* wherein a fellow bemoaning yesterday's Tory election victory said something like, "Well, there goes the National Health Service. It was nice knowing you!"

The response tweets were instructive. People who had good experiences weighed in - "NHS saved my eyesight!" "NHS saved my mum's life!" and so on. Then there were the anti-business responses wailing that at some time in the future, the health care system might become profitable for someone through the horrors of privatization. "Profiteers" were attacked and "business" lambasted.

After my emotional reaction subsided, I thought that the reasoned response would be to point out that the entire government runs on profits. Without someone making a profit, there are no taxes. Ergo, if the government services are good, profits are good.

I wonder what the replies would be to something like that.

* - How's that for an unsourced story?

2 comments:

IlĂ­on said...

"I wonder what the replies would be to something like that."

The responses would be just what they should be, you h8er!

tom said...

While we're having fun with government success, go back and look at the "stimulus" charts. The unemployment rate announced this morning is what Obama promised to achieve THREE YEARS AGO. Even the "do nothing" plan was going to get us to this level over two years ago.

Stimulus: way worse than doing nothing at all.