Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (New York Times Edition)

LizardBreath thinks that the New York Times's Sarah Lyall needs a new career--she should be working for the Republican National Committee, not for a newspaper:

Unfogged: Sunday's Times had an article on problems with the dental care provided by the British National Health Service. Apparently waiting times are too long, dentists are too time-pressured and therefore give substandard care; and dentists feel that they're underpaid and so leave the NHS for private practice. And so as a result of all of these failings of the NHS, people living in Britain have terrible, terrible teeth.

Except, of course, that that's an idiotic conclusion. As the above sentence makes clear, private practice is still an option. Anyone in Britain who wants to go to a dentist, and has the money to pay for it, can see a private dentist whenever they want, just like in the US. The only thing the NHS is doing is providing free dental care to those who otherwise couldn't afford it, or don't choose to pay for it. So a story about the rotten teeth suffered by the poor British who have been failed by their NHS is terribly incomplete -- they've been failed by the market provision of private dental care, and the NHS hasn't managed to fully compensate for that market failure. In the US, of course, people who can't afford to go to the dentist are less likely to get care than people in Britain; they haven't even got a flawed NHS to fall back on.

Man, you read stories like this, and you'd almost think people were trying to make universal health insurance look bad.