Oh Matron!

“Everyone knows the NHS cannot stand still in the face of demographic change and medical advance. Reform is a constant necessity”.

Alan Milburn.

 

BY THE MIDDLE OF THIS CENTURY, the cost of the NHS to the taxpayer will double to over £200 billion. In today’s Daily Telegraph, Alan Milburn takes the Coalition to task for its u-turn on the much needed NHS reforms that  the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley had championed.

            Of course, the country cannot afford such a bill for the health needs of its people. This is why urgent changes had to be made. If, by the middle of this century, the country can no longer afford, free at the point of need, a publicly funded system of health care, then it will be due, in large part to the two leaders of the Coalition, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

            It is estimated that by 2050, the population of this country will increase to 70 million due primarily to the influx of immigrants the previous government allowed  to settle among us in the hope of harvesting their votes. Couple this with the increased longevity of our citizens, and the new, costly, technological innovations that are appearing almost on a monthly basis, then the realisation that the NHS needs major reform becomes apparent.

            Both Cameron and Clegg, for reasons best explained by Mr Milburn in his Telegraph piece, have sold the people short and betrayed their future for wholly political consideration. As Mr Milburn complained: “Cameron has returned to his original strategy of playing safe on the NHS in order to decontaminate the Tory brand”. While in Nick Glegg’s case, “[Clegg] has had a different motive: to differentiate his Liberal Democrats from their Conservative Coalition partners by saving the NHS from “Tory privatisers”.

            The NHS cannot continue on its present course. The service has attained almost religious significance among the electorate, and this has paralyzed our politicians, who live to make themselves popular with the electorate; and prevents them acting in any other way than self-seeking.

            Ambition and popularity has, in the case of much needed NHS reform, done a major disservice to our citizens’ future. If the truth be known, Cameron was not unduly concerned that Clegg took the credit for this u-turn; for when history returns to their fatal decision, then Cameron can give a plaintive shrug and point to his partner in coalition for forcing the fatal decision upon him.

 

OF COURSE, THOSE WORKING WITHIN THE  health service, say they to understand the need for reform, but believe that Lansley went too far. It is strange that the spokesmen of those working in the public sector always see the need, but always opposes any remedy, that will put either their members jobs under threat, or supports any kind of input by the private sector into the NHS.

            Andrew Lansley should have said to Cameron, that if he backtracks on the much needed reforming of the NHS, then he would move to the backbenches. If Andrew Lansley had done this out of principle, instead of kow-towing out of ambition, then he would have been far thought of  future generations than he now stands to be.

 

            By opposing the major reforms needed, this Coalition has paved the way for the NHS to become a system of health care that not only vacates its original criteria of free cradle to the grave treatment, but becomes a minimalist service.

            For our nation cannot afford, through taxation, a doubling in the cost of NHS spending. Mr Milburn knows this and wishes to preserve its ethos; but he also knows that to do so things must change dramatically. These changes must, above all, push to one side the reactionary impulses of the self-interest groups working  within the NHS through their unions.

            If the radical change that Andrew Lansley sought to introduce is no longer on the horizon because of political expediency,  then anything offered instead will fall well short of what is needed.

 

I SPEAK AS SOMEONE who has greatly benefited from the NHS. I have relied upon this much appreciated system of healthcare since the age of 19 (I am now 61), when I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. I have, over these decades been well monitored by the NHS,  and I received two new hips in 1981, followed by a review in 2008, when one of the hips was replaced.

            Five years ago, I was admitted to hospital suffering from anaemia, which lead to the discovery of  three ulcers due to my medication for spondylitis; and was given 4 units of blood.

            Last November I had an aneurism on my lung, and, as a consequence, was put on wafarin, which thins my blood, but (should) limit my intake of wine.

            So I, like millions of others, have had much to be grateful for. The NHS should be a blueprint for all systems of health care. But if the services it provides can be carried out at less cost in the private sector but through public imbursement, then the savings made to the NHS allows publicly provided healthcare to continue; and believe me, I believe in publicly funded health care.

            However, the NHS has become an almost ideologically driven service, where the principle is put above the needs of the people, whose sole concern is their treatment.

 

ANY SYSTEM OF HEALTHCARE paid out of  taxation should meet the concerns, and only the concerns of those who pay for and require treatment. All those who pay their taxes to fund such a system care about is that they, when needed, receive the best care available to them. They do not, I suggest care whether such treatment is in a NHS or private hospital. All the individuals, as well as their families care about, is his or her recovery.

            But when it comes to those unions that represent their members within the NHS, such a consideration is never considered; and this is why any sentimental attachment to the NHS is not only silly, but may prove dangerous.

            If we cannot, for political reasons, alter the way in which be deliver publicly funded healthcare today, then, come the middle of this century, we will not be able offer our people any kind of publicly funded healthcare – saving the bare minimum. The rest to be paid via private insurance.