Visit home a reality check on single-payer

Commentary. By Eric Anderson, MD, AMNews contributor. June 11, 2001.

COMMENTARY

Observations on the state of medical practice and medical life

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Originally a British-trained physician bitterly opposed to socialized medicine, I have actually come to the opinion that America now needs a single-payer system for health care.

So it is with some trepidation that I make my annual visit to the United Kingdom -- an otherwise welcome journey to see my mother, now 97 and in a nursing home. The bad vibrations shaking the country about the National Health Service usually become part of my visit when I ask the British Airways flight attendant for a British newspaper.

As I open up the paper, my concerns are that the British government may have screwed up again in running what theoretically is the only ideal health system for an industrialized nation. I worry I'll find some negligent act that's absolutely overwhelming, or the newspaper will suggest some internal management discord that might bring the 53-year-old service to its arthritic knees.

I don't want to find this stuff in the papers because it suggests government incompetence is inevitable in any society and it bursts the bubble that socialized medicine may be the way to go. But I always find things to read.

So what was cooking in Britain in the spring of 2001 as my Boeing 777 winged its way to London?

Initially, health stories that seemed simple. London psychologists had completed a controlled trial with 80 volunteers that showed the New Age mystical effect of crystals was all in the mind. As was aromatherapy, said other scientists from the University of Munich, whose research demonstrated that expensive oils were no more effective than tap water. [...]