Correspondent of the Day, June 3

Actually, British System Works Quite Well
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I am tired of the United Kingdom's National Health Service being used as a political Aunt Sally, as Ross Mackenzie did recently. Doesn't he think that, after 60 years of experience, if the NHS was and is so awful, the British public and politicians would have used their very flexible government system to throw overboard such a supposed albatross? Rather, the Brits are proud of the principle of the NHS (care free at point of delivery) whilst very critical of poor performance here and there.

I write as a former member of a local U.K. NHS Board for a town of 330,000 people. Yes, the NHS is managed locally, not from the center. And the medical professionals are not salaried but self-employed. They work in a mixed private/public health system and many move daily and easily between both sectors. They are well paid, too.

Yes, there are budgets -- and if you have pressures the NHS center may be asked to find more resources. And if treatments don't work, they will be discouraged. And elective surgery gets less priority. Also, I chaired the local NHS Complaints body, where we could review cases and give patients and relatives a chance to see that many perceived problems were the result of poor communication and so assuaged any push to legal remedies. Yet we the NHS could penalize doctors and dentists but not by way of the courts.

Unlike most of your columnists, I can speak from personal experience as a contented NHS patient for 50 years. Also, two family members had serious cancers. I checked over here and was advised that the treatments being given by the NHS were world-class, one in a small hospital 230 miles from London. And in both cases the primary-care doctor came to the family homes daily, as did the district nurses. And only this month my 96-year-old mother had a heart monitor implanted; thanks so much to the NHS.

No, the Brits would not trade their NHS for our hodgepodge. We here have on one hand the well-insured ("so this a great system") and on the other the uninsured and the seriously ill who, lacking the resources of the insurance industry and drug manufacturers, can only with little political clout decry our lack of reforming resolve and generally indifferent quality health outcomes.

And leaving employers to carry much of the burden we all should share is no consolation to those in our automotive industry who are losing their jobs. How stupid and self-flagellating can we get?

Tony Pelling.
Richmond.