A message posted on the social networking website Twitter with the tag ‘#welovetheNHS’ resulted in tens of thousands of people responding with positive messages of their own experience.
People were defending the British National Health Service from American criticism aimed at it during the Town Hall debates on National Health care reform. Those twittering included, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron who were both quick to add their voice to the debate. Brown has since written to have been profoundly moved by the enormous groundswell of support.
There are obvious pros and cons to both the UK and US health systems and the media is having a great time in putting them in opposition. European countries are also being included in the debate, as a potential way forward, having systems that thrive on insurance input yet still ensure every patient is covered if they cannot afford it.
What I thought was great was the loyalty of the British public for an organisation which is so often condemned in the press as being below standard, riddled with infection and full of over worked staff. The general consensus seems to be that when the National Health Service works – it works very well. This is a national institution that people hold dear to their hearts especially those that have been saved from desperate situations.
This publicly generated, self initiated campaign is something that marketing agencies and communication departments would have loved to have instigated, let’s hope the complex ‘Twitter opinion’ data can be filtered into some sort of consensus to assist in a user driven positive system change.
