More cash, less dog-whistling needed by the NHS
[Image: PA].
Cynics are deploying the NHS’s current woes to argue the cherished principle at its heart – free care at the point of delivery based not on ability to pay, but on clinical need – makes for inefficient and unsustainable healthcare.
Nothing could be further from the truth: one study rated it the top-performing healthcare system out of a group of countries that included Germany, France and Canada, despite costing less per head than all but one in that group.
What we are seeing is the direct result of our health service being starved of the financial resources it needs to maintain existing levels of care to an ageing population. The government has imposed the tightest funding squeeze the NHS has faced in its 70-year history.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt continues to insist the English NHS has been given the resources it asked for, despite the health select committee pointing out the dodgy financial engineering involved in this claim.
Even worse, he has sought to deflect from the funding crisis by launching an offensive against overseas patients, despite the fact that pre-charging them for elective care would raise only a tiny sliver of the NHS’s annual budget.
This dog-whistle politics is all the more revolting given the NHS’s reliance on its migrant workforce.
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We have an ageing population, something that has been evident for at least 40 years, but the last few governments have all been reducing he care given in this area, and expecting he private sector to take up the slack which has lead to more expensive lower standards of care for the elderly. Meanwhile the governments have been putting a system in place that is designed for a swift change to a privatised health service, this means that, along with the mindless use of PFI deals, there is more money being spent on the NHS, but it is going into private providers pockets, not on patient care.
I’m not just worried but to be frank, I’m terrified over the future of the NHS. I’ve got 20 grands’ worth of electronics implanted in my upper chest with another eight years or so life remaining in the battery. To have my device implanted privately would’ve cost £50,000 (device and surgery). What will I be facing in 2024, assuming I make it that far?