Three letters in last week's Spectator responded to my article the previous week (see posting below) in which I argued that American medical care is markedly superior to the NHS. All three letters were supportive. Two told dramatic contrasts in treatment received in American and British hospitals (good in America and bad in Britain). The third was as follows:

Sir:

James Bartholomew's description of US healthcare was generally accurate except for one thing. The statistic that over half of American personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills was cooked by the study's authors, who are well-known evangelists for an Amerian NHS (see Gail Heriot's article in National Review at www.nationalreview.com/comment/heriot200502110735.asp). They admitted that for half of the people supposdly wiped out by medical bills, those bills amounted to only about US$1,000 over two years. Since the median American family income is over US$50,000, very few American families who are at all fiscally prudent could be bankrupted by an unexpected bill for US$1,000. Almost all American adults have credit cards and personal bankruptcy laws allow Americans to cancel all their credit card debt while keeping a vehicle and a house. Yes, medicine is overpriced here for all the reasons Bartholomew describes, but our bankruptcy rate is due more to easy credit and bad banruptcy laws than the price of anything.

Dennis Duggan
by email

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS

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