Why does the British government want to follow the fail American model?
Translated by Laurent Delpit. See the original article in English
Article also translated in:
This is the question asked by journalist-blogger Natalie Bennet. British blogger, Green Party activist, she brings up the issue of the frail NHS (National Health Service). According to her, the two successive governments (labour and lib-dem) have been slashing away the emblematic British public service. She wonders, quite prosaically, how can a job seeker pay for his simplest medication with his £65.45 allowance?
I ♥ the NHS | Photo: Ennor | Flickr.com | CC license
I’ve been pondering this for a while. The “American model” of politics and society supports a small state and everything possible (and sometimes impossible) being left to the market. And the most minimal of minimalist (ranging to non-existent) social support systems.
This is a society that despite being the richest by per capita income in the world, has nearly 15% of households suffering food insecurity – in simple terms they sometimes don’t know where there next meal is coming from.
About 1 in 50 Americans lives in a household that has no income but food stamps – a hundred to a couple of hundred dollars a month that can only be used for basic purchases.
It is a society that has just about the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world,
On the side of medicine, run basically for the benefit of the deeply flawed, indeed often deadly, pharmaceutical industry, giant healthcare providers who get away with charging crazy prices, and medical insurance companies that make enormous profits.
So what is Britain now doing? Both the former Labour government and the current Tory-Lib Dem coalition is privatising the much-loved and valued NHS at a rate of knots, steaming towards the privatised American system.
They’re slashing away our already (by European standards) inadequate benefits system at a rate of knots, heading towards the American “you probably won’t actually starve, but you’ll sometimes go hungry” model.
I’ve been pondering a figure I came across that the basic Job Seekers’ Allowance of £65.45 is equivalent to just 41 per cent of the Minimum Income Standard for a working-age adult. (I’ve been just about living recently on Night Nurse, an anti-cough medicine that’s the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, and if you’re on job seekers’, that, at around £6 a bottle, is clearly not in the budget, so I’d just have to be coughing all night…)
(…)
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