Health matters

Back to the Highlands again for a very wet loch-side run. In fact we might as well have been running in the loch, rather than beside it.

The National Health Service in the UK was established in 1948 to deliver health care to all, funded by taxation, rather than paid for at the point of use. In other words delivered according to need, and paid for according to means. This was a remarkable achievement of fairness, good sense and practical socialism. Inevitably, with the shifting political culture of the last 25 years, this service has been steadily privatised and eroded, covertly and overtly, in the name of “efficiency savings”, to the point where the current government are presiding over a service which is so efficient it is deemed to be breaching the human rights of elderly people being cared for (ref).

Ironically, 1948 was also the year in which George Orwell wrote his brilliant dystopian novel 1984. The recent bizarre introduction of a continuous video loop of Health Secretary Lansley asking patients to thank their nursing staff for their care (unless they pay £5 to turn it off) would have fitted seamlessly into Orwell’s vision (ref).

To be fair, many aspects of the NHS remain excellent, despite the predations of financial managers and market-driven politicians, but the prognosis is not good.