Paying to Jump the Queue.

There’s a particularly prolific ad on my Hotmail home page for private health insurance. It says:

There are 2.4 million people on NHS waiting lists.

Get private medical insurance and jump the queue.

I find this intensely offensive. For a start, 2.4 million people amounts to about 4% of the population of Britain, so you can be pretty sure that the figure is manipulated for maximum effect. It seems entirely probable that the majority of it consists of people waiting a mere few days for non-urgent doctors’ appointments. But there’s also a principle involved.

Health care is one of life’s most fundamental needs. As such, it shouldn’t be in the hands of Big Capitalism where it’s treated as a commodity to make a small number of people very rich. In that sort of environment, profit always takes priority over service as soon as the two come into conflict. So I’ve got a better idea.

There will always be well off people who are happy to pay money to jump the queue, just because they can and because it makes them feel good. So instead of us all going out and getting private medical insurance, why don’t we apply double taxation to the whole private health industry and use the money to get the real NHS waiting list down?