Simon Gibbs on direct health care

Last Friday Simon Gibbs spoke at Brian Micklethwait’s. He explained that libertarians are very good at talking, which is important and useful, but that he wanted to see them doing more, and that inspiring such action is what his Libertarian Home project is really about.

He had many ideas of things that libertarians could do. Some were simple and obvious, such as attending demonstrations so that the media is forced to explain who this strange new breed of demonstrator is, or handing out leaflets at events such as Occupy demonstrations where some of the attendees might not be fully sold on all of the ideas of their movement and might be amenable to persuasion. But what he really wants to see is demonstrations of things that would be everyday in a libertarian society actually working.

An example of this is direct health care. In the USA, Dr Josh Umbehr runs AtlasMD. You pay $50 per month for access to a general practitioner. You get better service, email and phone advice, and out of hours appointments. And someone who sees you as a customer rather than a nuisance, and spends time with you and helps you to find the right consultant or to try different medicines instead of rushing you out in time for the next appointment. Simon found one doctor in the UK who offers such a service for £125 per month for a couple.

I would like to see more of this. Simon explains:

It would not need to be the dominant form of healthcare, but merely to be available for about the price of a gym membership to 10% of the population. We can then start to use this kind of care as a counter example to the sainted NHS. To get there, we need to stimulate demand. We need to talk about this idea with friends and talk about the various ways in which this would be more pleasant and more convenient than the GP service we get from the NHS. We would then be able to talk about the NHS as something like a safety net for very serious medical catastrophes, not something we rely on every day for every kind of medical assistance.