The polemic of Obamacare and the nature of the NHS continues. There is a really important contribution to be made by Dr A. J. Cronin, a doctor of some note. Dr Cronin died in 1981, and the contribution is not scientific, but moral. It is not a paper, but a novel, called The Citadel.
I am not going to try to summarise the book; the plot is simple enough, but it is the experience of the author and the emotion he expresses that make the book worthwhile. It is the anger expressed at a system where the rich buy doctors’ time that they do not need while the poor die. It is a book that helped Labour win the ’45 election and helped the founding of the NHS.
It is available from Amazon in paperback and there are four English-language and two Italian film adaptations. The 1938 version is listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.
xD.
It’s good that the debate is taking place though, rather than no debate. The results are pretty clear in the poll at my place but I feel we’re all arguing at cross purposes. It’s not wherther good health care is possible because a monolithic system will necessarily contain good medicine somewhere but whether there has been waste on bureaucrats which might have been directed into medicine and if there is a feeling of demoralization whereas, under the GP system, there was not.
.-= jameshigham´s last blog: [jagger] just a mannish boy next to muddy waters =-.
Your poll is not clear at all, James, because the numbers are so small and so the confidence interval is huge. It is meaningless.
xD.