National health care: Breeding ground for terror?

With physicians fingered as perpetrators in the attempted terrorist attack on the Glasgow International Airport, some have suggested that state-run health care systems breed terrorism. Pittsburgh’s own Jerry Bowyer took the opportunity of recent Fox News appearance to argue exactly this point.

If we go with a British-style, or German-style health care system, we’re going to have British-style or German-style recruitment problems, and we’re going to turn to the Arab and Muslim world for doctors, because they’re producing a lot of them. And, if we organize ourselves that way, Neil, we’re going to have bureaucracies, which are going to find it hard to shield themselves from terrorists.

Bowyer’s meme proved sticky; days later Mark Steyn opined in the Orange County Register that the “legacy of Britain’s socialized medical system is a growing reliance on foreign doctors,” while New York Sun columnist Daniel Johnson echoed similar claims.

Fact check: Privatization is a magnet for professional health care migration. As Lynellyn Long, a senior associate at Citrus Partners (London) reports, “the largest number of international medical graduates (IMGs) registered overseas are found in the U.S., followed by the UK, Canada and Australia.”

Long’s research, presented at at September 7-8, 2007 Ford Institute conference, shows further that “given an increased aging population in the U.S., the demand for health care workers - particularly nurses and providers of elderly care - is projected to grow. Even with the opening of new professional programs, the U.S. will continue to be dependent on foreign sources of supply.”

While Bowyer is quick to warn that terrorist physicians can “game the system” and blend into national health care bureaucracies, Long observes that “the increased privatization of care has also made it difficult to monitor and track these labor migrant flows.”