We have been banging on for weeks here about the middle-class S-CHIP chiselers, liberal slackers who get to be first in line when there is free government money going for expensive things like health insurance.
This week in Britain the Civitas think tank issued a report on how the middle class in Britain get first in line in the British National Health Service (NHS).
In Quite Like Heaven? Nick Sedden writes about the advantages that the middle class has in navigating a big bureaucracy for things like hip replacements.
Higher socio-economic groups are more likely to have family or friends who work in the health services, and even if these contacts are not directly used to gain access to services they act as an important source of advice on how to work the system … at least one study-of hip replacement utilisation has found evidence of the effectiveness of the "sharp elbows" of the middle class in the welfare state.
Exactly. I had a friend in Britain whose 80-ish mother needed a hip replacement. No deal, they said; we’ll put you on a waiting list. Getting the procedure done in a private hospital would have cost a bundle, so my friend complained to her Member of Parliament. One thing led to another, and her mother got her hip replacement.
It is well said that when you can’t compete on price then the only thing left is footwork and connections. As the Daily Telegraph puts it:
[T]he fault lies in a system in which the purchasing power of money is absent, leaving social know-how as the only currency.
When the middle class pays their own way then it makes sense to put the squeeze on them to be generous and help the poor with charity and know-how. But when there’s a government system then you get the middle class using its skills selfishly to get to the head of the line.
And as we know from Arthur C. Brooks in Who Really Cares? secular, liberal people give less to charity than conservative, religious people.
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