A Sick Type Of Nostalgia
by Marcus Bachler
PJ O’Rourke once said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free."
A funny thing the human mind. When recalling past memories, it seems to have a great capacity to see only the rosy parts of the past while forgetting the bad parts.
Take the British National Health Service (NHS). It is a remnant of a state leviathan, the product of a collectivized economy raised during the second world war when necessity dictated that the economic interests of the individual be subordinated to the defence of the country.
A new collectivised mentality arose out of the ashes of the war. This meant that Clement Atlee's program for the "nationalization of industry" easily won the 1945 election over Winston Churchill's promise of free-market reforms. One of the most popular nationalizations was that of the health service. With an economy that still had a post-war rationing system for food and other goods, medical care suddenly appeared free and available for everyone. The British people were ecstatic, the idea being that health-care was now better served in a collective, rather than through the activity of selfish individuals. Wrong! The NHS, now 60 years on, provides one of the worst levels of health care in the western world and has some of the longest waiting lists for life-saving operations. The government under Tony Blair spends over 76 billion pounds (US $140 billion) a year on the NHS - that's almost 10% of GDP - and employs 1.3 million workers, yet still the NHS does not improve and grows ever more expensive. Tony Blair's government now wants to introduce the idea of NHS operations performed by the private sector, albeit still paid for by the taxpayer to the tune of a further £3 billion (US $5.5 billion). Many media commentators are crying foul because they say this will cause a further disintegration of the NHS and the strengthening of private sector health care.
So if the NHS has always been so bad, why do the UK public balk at the idea of removing it? For one irrational reason - nostalgia. The nostalgic myth that the NHS was once a wonderful institution, the envy of the world, delivering medical care second to none. It may be bad now, they think, but it just needs to return to its former glory. They don't know how, but somehow. The media regularly shows old 1950's news reels with happy patients sitting up in bed smiling for the cameras. Medicine was rationed during the second world war and with the advent of the NHS things appeared to improve because of it, instead of despite it.
Nostalgia is not the same thing as joyful memories. I am sure everyone has some joyful memories from the past that they recall with fondness. Your first day at school, the first time you were kissed, winning a coveted prize, a happy event in the company of departed family, friends, or lovers. This is the positive type of remembering of the past when we embrace again our values and compare them to where we are now. We think about the past joyfully and then look at the present and imagine our future with the same joy.
However, nostalgia is a seductive and sentimental lie. It is not objective, but a deliberate and self-comforting distortion. In the post-industrial world of today much modern nostalgia evokes an anti-capitalist rant, a longing for simplicity and community.
The typical voter thinks that the desire to return to the past is a modern phenomenon, a function of consumerism, hi-tech, urban living and under-funded social services and that tomorrow (never today because something always stands in the way) a progressive and "modern" government will fix it for them.
Nostalgia for the NHS is an emotional comfort blanket, but it is also an illusion.
Most voters agree that the NHS does not work properly and that many people are suffering and dying as a result. However, tragically, they still cling to an imagined past glory of the NHS, while dismissing the future benefits of a free-market health system.
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