IEA Podcast

The world in which the BBC operates has changed dramatically. Viewers and listeners have unlimited choice and are ruthlessly discerning. So, is it time to scrap the licence fee?

No other European country has copied the NHS model in half a century. Almost all comparable countries use a mix of funding mechanisms, rather than relying on taxation alone, and most outperform the NHS in health outcomes.

UK cancer survival rates lag behind those of comparable countries, A&E delays are increasing, the number of operations being cancelled is dire, staffing rates are in freefall and the tick-box target culture is sending doctors and dentists screaming into the private sector. The UK has one doctor for 356 people, against a developed world average of one for 277.

The NHS’s archaic divisions of labour between GPs, hospital doctors, pharmacies and clinics is now indefensible. So too is the division between the NHS itself and social and domiciliary care. As any victim of these restrictive practices knows, treatment delayed is treatment denied.

Sooner or later, the pressure of demand (now from all age groups) will force the NHS to choose between rationing by some form of means-tested pricing or by further bureaucratic delay. Last year’s Guardian survey of foreign systems showed there were plenty of other ways to organise public health. Before the coming of the NHS, London’s (local) health service was regarded as the best in Europe. It is not that now. 

So what are the alternatives? 

In countries without the NHS what does healthcare and insurance look like for sick, older or poorer people? Are the rich able to purchase a luxury tier of healthcare and what happens if your insurer goes bankrupt in countries like the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium or Israel?

Venezuela is currently facing the worst dictatorial regime in Latin America. Moreover, its economic collapse is the worst in the modern history of the western hemisphere. Jorge Jraissati is the President of the Venezuelan Alliance, an international platform for initiatives advancing freedom, human rights and economic development in Venezuela, Jorge will not only explain how Venezuelans plan to reconquer their democracy and rebuild their economy but also share some lessons from the Venezuelan experience applicable to other nations. Why is the Venezuelan economy ruined? How and why did Venezuela become socialist?

Jorge’s work has focused on raising international awareness about the importance of achieving a free and democratic Venezuela and he has been invited as a guest lecturer to more than twenty academic institutions such as Harvard, NYU and Cambridge. Academically, Jorge is an economist from the Wilkes Honors College, and a Visiting Fellow of the Abigail Adams Institute at Harvard.

November marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Built to separate East and West Germany and to stop the flow of people from East to West, the wall came to symbolise the ideological divide between the communist Soviet bloc and the western democratic capitalism. Years on, East Germany still lags the West.

But after four decades of socialism, just how big was the economic gap between East and West? Whilst West Germany experienced aWirtschaftswunder and became one of the world’s economic powerhouses, in 1989, the East German economy lay in shambles. But is this perception correct, or is it sometimes overblown? How different really was the standards of living between East and West and what did it take to overcome the “legacy cost” of socialism after 1989?

Today, according to some surveys, many people in Central and Eastern Europe say they miss the “good old days” of socialism, or at least important aspects of it. Some seem to have “buyers’ remorse”, disappointed with the results of economic liberalisation. Does this show that capitalism is not that great, after all? If people still look back fondly on the days of state socialism, can we truly say we’ve won?

It’s true to say that socialist ideas has had somewhat of a resurgence in this country. Proponents – often young people – argue that this time around socialism will be different. When challenged, they say Marx never advocated any of the terror, coercion and loss of life incurred under Soviet rule, nor did Marx demand a wall be built through the German capital. Is it therefore inevitable that socialism leads to coercion and the stamping out of freedoms? Or is it as John McDonnell put it, like blaming all Catholics for the Inquisition?