NHS: the ultimate political football

James Gubb, 1 November 2007

Rudi Giuliani has caused just a bit of a political storm this week for citing poor UK cancer survival rates in an attempt to rile Hilary Clinton’s ‘socialised’ healthcare proposals. So now we have hot-shots on both ‘sides’ of the US political debate bandying around the merits of the NHS, after the glowing reviews it received in Michael Moore’s questionable polemic, SICKO. I’m not going to get into the argument either way here, but just to point out one particular irony: Alan Johnson has the nerve to tell the Times: “The British NHS should not become a political football in American presidential politics”. If only New Labour could practice what he preaches in the domestic context.