Private education and healthcare

[LeafUsAlone]

I'm just curious as to why they are considered morally indefensible when people being able to afford better quality clothing, houses, safer cars etc aren't commented on in the same way?

Considering both private healthcare and education doesn't necessarily mean a better quality, why do people get so annoyed over them?

What are people allowed to spend their money on then, according to you?

Because in both cases they denude public services of resources that could be shared by all and place them in the hands of rich privileged people. This is the inverse care law that those with the most need get the least resources

Private healthcare is provided by clinicians who were all trained by the NHS as there is no other way a Dr can be trained and the vast majority of them also work for the NHS. If private medicine did not exist those Drs would put all their time and energy into NHS work and the NHS would improve. Private medicine leaches off the NHS by taking staff it trained and by cherry picking easy cases and leaving the NHS to pick up at complications. When you use private medicine you contribute to the demise of the NHS

Post pandemic lots more people are going private. As there is more private demand more Drs are cutting their NHS hours so guess what the NHS waiting list rises. People are paying for one off private assessments and then expecting the NHS to honour those diagnoses which are not always accurate (private Drs don't have access to your healthcare record and go on what they are told plus have an incentive to give the patient what they want) cf Panorama on private ADHD clinics making dodgy diagnoses which led to lack of meds for all.

I am a Dr and I do not privately educate my children nor do I use or provide private medicine on moral grounds although I could afford to. I could make a lot more money doing private work, I have been asked to many times, but I consider it morally unacceptable and I continue to give all my time and effort to the NHS. The founding values of the NHS are still good and I live my life by them.

Wanting to dismantle inequality and aid the distribution of good and fair service for all, or at the very least the vast majority, is not “wanting to drag everyone down to the same low level”. It is instead perpetuated by those who wish to keep exceptional service (and wealth) exclusive to the few. It is no coincidence that those in the position of power and privilege to aid the improvement of public services are privately educated and use private healthcare, for both themselves and their families. They have no vested self interest in ensuring a good and fair service for all.

People can spend their money on what they wish to – that doesn’t mean that I agree with a society that a) offers it and b) orchestrates it to display stark inequalities in very real terms. Those are two different things.

I keep thinking about this argument - that if people didn't go private en masse there would not be benefits in terms of improved social mobility or equality. It seems to be an argument that if you could just get the social segregation right, state education would have the same social impacts as private education.

Huh?!

A very well set out opinion. I also can afford private education and healthcare but choose not to use it. The constant rhetoric of “jealousy” is rather naive to say the least.

@Didimum
Enough labelling everyone ‘naive’. Is it your word of the week?

I’ve used it twice. It’s the most appropriate word to use in the circumstances I am using it. I won’t have my choice of words policed.

The absolute communism all over this thread!

According to these people we should all have the exact same clothes, food, schools, medics, houses etc..

Because they're all hUmAn RiGhTs apparently...

What I find morally wrong is believing that equality 🟰 treating everyone the same.

Treating everyone the same is sometimes the most unfair thing you can do.

Take SEN children. State provision for them can be absolutely terrible and inappropriate for them.

Which is why the state funds private school access for some. The smaller class size is the right answer.

Nowhere has anyone said people should have the same food, clothes and houses. They have actively pointed out that those things are not human rights and should therefore not form part of the discussion. They have also said that those things do not create wide and severe inequalities in a society. Education and health do.

Though I’m not sure it’s worth arguing with anyone who displays such disdain against human rights (despite benefiting from them).

I don’t think anyone is equating the two. Access to private services is not necessarily a bad thing. The issue arises when it degrades public services and opportunities for all.

I'm extrapolating the logic.
If you believe that healthcare and education are human rights (which they aren't), then the logic says that food, housing and clothing are also. I've had this argument on here before.

If it's a human right, then surely it's immoral for medics or teachers to require payment for those services?

Literally nobody has said that.

The right to education and health are indeed human rights.

Food, housing and clothes are only human rights when in the forms of health and shelter. And, as previously pointed out, having luxurious and/or inexpensive variations of those things alone does not create severe and generational inequalities in a society.

Health care and education are things that we, as a society, decided would be of benefit to us, as a society, to provide for all.

We are suffering the consequences now of a poorly managed NHS when you look at the number of people currently out of work due to ill health. Even if you don't care about the rights of individuals to have their health looked after, surely you can see that it is a drain on all of us when we then need to support people who can't work. This is what happens when only the wealthy are able to stay well.

Just because you socialise something doesn't make it a human right.

If it's immoral for people in the UK (being humans) to be able to access better standards of things, then surely it is immoral that our education and healthcare is better than that in the Congo? Are they not human?

Isn't it a right??

Just because you socialise something doesn't make it a human right.

I never said it did.

If it's immoral for people in the UK (being humans) to be able to access better standards of things, then surely it is immoral that our education and healthcare is better than that in the Congo? Are they not human?

I think there is an argument for that as it goes but that is not what I was saying at all if you actually read what I said.

Isn't it a right??

That would appear to be a matter of opinion. Do you believe in human rights at all? Where would you draw the line?

This is far too reductionist.

No one here arguing against private education and healthcare is using the word ‘immoral’. It’s too complex an issue to simply break it down into either ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ and nobody should be using those terms when debating a set of systems in a centuries-long society.

I thought you were very polite in ascribing the best possible interpretation to the thought processes behind the comments, tbh.

Yes you did:
"Health care and education are things that we, as a society, decided would be of benefit to us, as a society, to provide for all."

The thing about human rights is that they apply to humans, regardless of where they are. We have far better educational and medical resources than the Congo (and we pay a lot more for it), ergo we are creating severe and generational inequalities.

I'm taking what you said and applying it to a human level. Suddenly when I do that your answers become a bit more abstract.

Since you asked, your human rights are, in a nutshell, what you are able to do if you were teleported to a deserted island.

My view is that there will always be inequality in society. Even if people are given the same opportunities, people are different so won’t always take them.

I started at the bottom of a company and worked my way up. My friend also started at the bottom of a company and is still in the same role nearly 20 years later on minimum wage. She was offered a promotion but declined it because she didn’t want to manage her friends.

Why morally indefensible? Maybe think of it like this:

Suppose your local water supply failed for some reason and you had to queue at a standpipe. Staff to ensure turn-taking at the tap. Someone comes and bribes the staff so as to jump the queue. Acceptable behaviour?

Or suppose your local health service supply failed for some reason and you had to queue at a hospital. Staff to ensure turn-taking at the a&e. Someone comes and bribes the staff so as to jump the queue. Acceptable behaviour?

Or suppose your local schoolteacher supply failed ... oh, you know the rest.

Can you, or not, see how private health care and education are morally equivalent to bribery facilitating queue-jumping? (Particularly given the public provision we have organised as a society.)

Sure, health care, education, public goods in general, may need to be rationed in times of scarcity of resource. But to ration by price rather than need is just obviously wrong. It's corrupt in the same way - quite precisely - as bribery. No?

Of course you might argue - along with Hayek and Friedman and all the rest - that the rich should be allowed to bribe their way to the front of any queue, for the sake of economic benefits to be gained by market allocation of scarce resources. You probably will, some of you.

And you are entitled to your views. I have never claimed here that a society without inequalities either should or would exist. My concern is the level of inequality and access and perpetuation of services that directly drive inequality. Education and healthcare being two of those – but education first and foremost.