For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about strategies for sustaining healthcare in an aging society.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is Britain’s oldest free-market think-tank, supporting decades of serious policy research and public outreach on the ways in which protecting and increasing economic and other freedoms can benefit all members of society. In 2014 the John Templeton Foundation supported research efforts by IEA concerning ways in which the U.K. might meet the structural challenges of maintaining social safety nets in the face of an aging population and rising costs. While the research looked at many issues — from pension reform to reassessing retirement ages — the largest share of effort focused on healthcare, a hot-button topic for a country whose health system, the NHS, is both beloved and a lightning rod for frustration and criticism from both patients and care providers.
In a series of reports, IEA head of health and welfare Kristian Niemietz analyzed the systems and outcomes of countries that, like the U.K., provide universal healthcare but with more flexible systems that deliver better patient care for similar costs. “The U.K. is far from being the only country which has achieved universal access to healthcare,” Niemietz writes. “But Britain is probably the only country where universal healthcare coverage is still celebrated as if it was a very special achievement.” Niemietz goes on to argue that this insular view makes it difficult for the British to adopt best practices from other countries, particularly the successful Social Health Insurance systems operating in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland.