Americans using the Alfie Evans case to criticise the NHS are deluded about the realities of the US's healthcare system

In all the many gut-wrenching aspects of the all-too-public case of Alfie Evans, one of the most sickening is exploitation of the tragedy by foreign politicians for their own selfish ideological ends. Exploitation, that is, made all the more objectionable for being based in a most profound ignorance about the medical and judicial systems of another country.

Understandably, the story of Alfie Evans, the severely ill toddler whose parents have been barred from taking him to Italy for final treatment, has touched many hearts around the world. The Italian government went so far as to make him an Italian citizen to facilitate the care his parents wish him to receive in a Rome hospital. That is a relatively benign sort of intervention, an expression of support, opening up options, while leaving decisions to the family, the doctors and the courts concerned.

Much less helpful, not to say impertinent, are Tweets from the likes of Mike Huckabee, former Republican governor of Arkansas, who says, quite simply, “government-run health care fails again”.

Oddly for someone with his political background, he chucks in a dollop of class envy too: “On the very day Brits celebrated the royal baby, the UK government removed life support system from 23-month-old Alfie Evans and stationed a line of police to keep his frantic parents from moving him to another hospital that would grant him care. A royal shame!”

What is really a royal shame is this vast well of ignorance that these know-nothings are swimming in. There are others, you see, no doubt representative of a deeply confused appreciation of reality. A Twitterer called “burnt Peacock” for example, who opines: “And no govt bureaucracy should be making medical care decisions best left between doctors and patients.” Or Steve Deace of the Steve Deace Show, who writes: “Want to know what the Death of the West looks like? Exactly no one in the UK healthcare system has practiced some form of civil disobedience today for #AlfieEvans. Rather, all are dutifully carrying out a ritualistic execution in broad daylight because the state says so.”

Someone needs to get these guys off their hyperventilators. Here are some actual facts that will help reduce their blood pressure and simultaneously improve cognitive performance.

Firstly, the National Health Service offers the British people superb health care financed from general taxation. It has its faults, but this form of social insurance means, for example, that a child such as Alfie Evans will receive treatment and round-the-clock care way beyond the means of his parents.

Bear in mind too that in the UK private insurance health schemes rarely offer full cover against long-term conditions such as Alzheimer’s or cancer, or if they do, it’s at great cost in unaffordable premiums. I do not know what would have happened to Alfie if he was in New York or Arkansas rather than London, but I do know he would not have the automatic assurance of first class treatment under the NHS.

Cost was not the issue in this case, nor did it come down to unthinking, uncaring state bureaucrats running some sort of Soviet-style system to take over people’s lives and kidnap their kids.

It’s like this. A child in Britain is protected by the law and the courts, and his or her interests are represented properly. When there are issues of life and death, then the courts listen and sift the complex medical evidence, the wishes of parents and, of course, the legal framework, including human rights entrenched in British law. Doctors are not allowed to just turn off life support, still less civil servants. It is a cynical misrepresentation of a case that has been through every court of the land, treated with utmost seriousness throughout.

If Alfie had been in a private hospital – of which there are quite a few in the UK operating perfectly freely – the courts would still have had a deciding role in the case.

The bottom line, to be frank, is that parents cannot treat their child like an item of personal property with untrammelled liberty, or else there would be no laws against child abuse or cruelty. The issue before the courts was the pain and welfare of Alfie, no more or less.

Thus, no parent can retain or dispose of a mortally ill child as they would a used car, and it is stupid to think human life is just another parental chattel. It isn’t, and nor should it be.

You can’t run a hospital like you would an election for governor of Arkansas or the White House; it is not a suitable place for populism.

As it happens, for what it’s worth (not much, I’d be the first to admit), if I’d been a judge in this case I would have allowed the parents the chance to take Alfie to Rome for a try at treatment, because it would be the only way they could achieve peace with themselves and their baby. I have no doubt that the courts and doctors were right to also weigh the prospective pain and suffering to be endured by the child, but I might have balanced things differently. But I also have no illusion that my views and judgements are superior to those reached.

What I am most clear about – and this is ironic considering the source of many of the tweets mentioned – is that politicians, journalists and TV stars should have no role in this whatsoever, and still less should there be any consideration of money when it comes to relieving suffering. The abiding principle of the British National Health Service is that no one should ever have to suffer in pain because they haven’t got the money to pay for treatment. That, I believe, is not the case in America.