More lessons from abroad

Heh. Gordon Campbell's trip to the UK looked bad enough based on what was already publicly known about the failure of P3s there...but the Tyee reports that Campbell arrived just in time to see the UK's top health administrator resign suddenly, apparently over an annual deficit that could run into ten figures:

Yesterday the system’s chief executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, unexpectedly tendered his resignation. Angry critics...in the UK say that years of privatization have balkanized the NHS into a chaotic and inefficient patchwork of hospitals, trusts and specialized clinics pitted against each other in a needlessly elaborate scheme of internal markets and price competition.

An anonymous government source identified as a “senior Blairite” told the Guardian that NHS trusts would have to “swallow their own smoke next year” and cut services in response to the funding crisis.

The current crisis, which has British papers like the Guardian and the Independent predicting that the year-end deficit for the NHS could run as high as $1.6 billion dollars (Cdn.), is viewed as a political quagmire for the Blair government. Labour has poured record sums of money into the NHS during Crisp’s five-year term in power.

Unfortunately, even with Campbell trying to point to the UK as an example for the system he wants British Columbia to follow, the British fiasco likely won't receive anywhere near as much attention in Canada as the CIHI's conclusion that Canada's health care system has seen mixed results over the past few years. But given the evidence from the UK that privatization merely ensures a similar rise in costs combined with an outright decline in services, there's no reason to all to think that privatization will cure any of what's currently ailing our health-care system.