By restricting private health care choices, the NHS and other beloved single-payer systems were doomed from the start.
In summer 2012, about 27 million Britons tuned in to the London Olympics’ opening ceremony, dreamed up by the Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle. Central to the show was an homage to the National Health Service (NHS), the United Kingdom’s single-payer health care system, that featured hundreds of volunteer nurses dancing around bedridden children. Transcending political affiliation, support for the NHS may be the strongest uniting force in the United Kingdom. As the Conservative Party politician Nigel Lawson put it in a thinly veiled shot at the Church of England, the NHS is “the closest thing the British have to a religion.”
