NHS

Imagine Britain Without The NHS

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

NHS Worship - London Olympic Games 1

–

It’s easy if you try

Imagine a Britain without the NHS.

A Britain where the state did not directly employ or contract nearly every doctor and nurse in the entire country.

A Britain where the government did not decide which cutting edge treatments would be offered to the public, and which ones were simply too expensive.

A Britain where citizens were not reliant on the state for the physical delivery of nearly all their healthcare needs.

A Britain where healthcare was unconstrained by politically influenced national targets.

A Britain where angry, jealous talk of “postcode lotteries” did not act as a brake on excellence or a requirement for dull, uniform mediocrity.

A Britain where every hospital superbug or missed A&E waiting target did not automatically become the prime minister’s overriding personal concern, freeing them up to actually be a world leader.

A Britain where we are able to have a rational, level-headed discussion about healthcare, and what kind of system would achieve the best outcomes for the most people at an acceptable cost.

A Britain where we understood that healthcare need not be a choice between the NHS and the infamous US system.

A Britain where we were able to take inspiration from the best aspects of different healthcare systems around the world in reforming our own.

A Britain where criticism of the NHS was not treated like blasphemy, with the offenders shamed on social media and their political careers curtailed.

A Britain where we gave nearly as much respect, honour and resources to our armed forces and veterans as we do to the NHS.

A Britain where we did not reflexively worship a giant, mid-century bureaucracy as our secular national religion.

A Britain which thought enough of itself to realise that there is far more that marks us out as a powerful, great and indispensable nation than our anachronistic 1940s healthcare system.

A Britain where lean, efficient public services existed to serve the people, rather than we the people existing only to serve our insatiable, rapacious public services.

A Britain where saying “the NHS served us ably for many decades after the war, but now it is time to look again at how we provide healthcare to our fellow citizens” was not a shocking, unacceptable statement.

Imagine a Britain where the link between politics and healthcare was broken and the NHS monopoly split up, meaning that things like the coming national strike of junior doctors could never happen.

Just imagine what could happen – all that we could accomplish – if only we were able to have a calm, rational conversation about healthcare in modern Britain.

 

National Health Service - NHS Leaflet - 1948

–

Further reading:

Our deadly obsession with the NHS

A Haidtian take on ‘NHS worship’

Worshipping the NHS costs lives

Britain’s cult-like worshop of the NHS must end

To save the NHS, let’s stop worshipping it like a god

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

The Daily Smackdown: ‘Save Our NHS’ Fanatics Thwart Essential Reform

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

nhs-lapel-pin-national-religion-healthcare-hagiography-sps

–

Trialling a new addition to Semi-Partisan Politics – the Daily Smackdown. Basically a repository for the zingers and comebacks that pop into my mind but which I lack the time to work into a full article, these will be one or two-paragraph responses to a specific piece or trending topic in the national media. The aim is to allow the blog to cover more ground each day, while challenging lazy thinking or rhetoric from across the political spectrum – as well as giving you all more to read!

Dr. Rob Galloway writes an “open letter to members of the British public” in Think Left today, deploying all of the usual tired catchphrases (“our NHS” is “on its knees”, etc. etc.) in an effort to persuade us that we should continue pumping endless money and human resources into an anachronistic healthcare delivery system from the 1940s.

From Galloway’s letter:

The NHS is on its knees and unless things change, it may not survive.  It has been attacked, part privatised, demoralised and starved of funds.

So the NHS’s defenders have been saying since 1948. But do go on:

We have tried to highlight what is going on; through the media, marches, speeches and endless tweets and face-book posts.  But it is not working.  Things are getting worse and the NHS, which we all care so much about may soon no longer, be able to care for us.

It’s almost as if endlessly sharing and re-tweeting the same sanctimonious, scaremongering articles within your own closed information loop of like-minded friends and acquaintances doesn’t actually effect meaningful change, isn’t it? Maybe talk to Ed Miliband about that one, I hear he’s thinking of starting a support group.

The only things which might save it is if the British public no longer just accept what is happening – but start to fight back.  This is above party politics.  This is about what we want our society to be like.  Fight back for the greatest safety net we have – the knowledge that as a UK taxpayer if we get sick, then we will be looked after; an envy throughout the world.

The envy of the world? Sorry, I’ve had enough of that one. I always forget how people in Canada simply collapse at the side of the road and go untreated until they swipe a valid credit card.

People who say the NHS is the “envy of the world” have clearly never used their passport and gone to another country. You don’t have to embrace the US model (often world-leading hospitals and treatments, with runaway costs and a crummy patient access system of giant private healthcare providers wrapped around them) to recognise that other countries somehow manage to provide good healthcare to their citizens without resorting to a monolithic, monopolistic, inefficient state provider like the NHS.

It’s funny – in so many areas, many people are self-deprecating about Britain and our national greatness, almost to a fault. Many of us can often be found negating our successes, apologising for our history or (in the case of the coming Brexit referendum) believing that an economic, cultural and military power like the UK somehow needs to remain yoked to that mid-century relic of a supranational political union, the EU, just to stay relevant in the world.

But on one issue alone – the National Health Service – we have convinced ourselves that we in Britain have created perfection itself, that no other nation on earth comes close to matching our achievement, and that health secretaries from Ottawa to Canberra secretly covet what we have. And yet surprisingly, few countries are beating down our door for advice on replacing their existing systems with one modelled on “Our NHS”. Shouldn’t that tell us something?

Let’s stop singing hymns to a 1940s anachronism or praying to Saint Aneurin Bevan to Save Our NHS for a moment, and actually re-examine British healthcare from the bottom up. If we were to do so today (not that we will), we would in all likelihood end up with something far better – and probably quite unlike – our current National Health Service.

–

Further Reading:

Treat the NHS as a religion, and you give it the right to run your life

Our deadly obsession with the NHS

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

Labour’s NHS Party Election Broadcast: Jo Brand Is A Big Fat Liar

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

 

“A decent society looks after its people” is the moralising title of Labour’s latest celebrity election broadcast about the NHS, starring comedian Jo Brand.

That Jo Brand is a loyal supporter of the Labour Party hardly comes as a shock – the comedian was a supporter of the People’s Assembly anti-austerity coalition, and performed at the Stand Up Against Reality Austerity gig organised by that group last year. And credit where credit is due: she puts her time and money where her mouth is, supporting a cause she believes in. But unfortunately, in the case of Labour Party scaremongering about the NHS, that cause is a blatant falsehood.

Brand opens Labour’s latest celebrity ad with one of those “oh! fancy seeing you here” introductions, as though we were the last people she expected to encounter as she exercised on a lone cross-trainer slap bang in the middle of a brightly lit TV studio:

“There’s an election coming up. You might know that. And we all have our own personal axes to grind. Mine is what’s gonna happen to the NHS. Not because of my undeniable status as a national fitness icon, but because once upon a time I used to be a nurse.”

Establish credibility? Check.

When debating healthcare reform in Britain, nothing sweeps away logical debate and replaces it with hushed reverence more effectively than uttering the words “I’m a nurse”, or “I’m an NHS doctor”. Suddenly the speaker becomes an oracle, imbued with deep and mystical wisdom about national healthcare policy thanks to their selfless occupation on the front lines of clinical care.

If you are employed by the NHS, that huge organisation, the largest employer in Britain and fifth largest in the world (just behind McDonald’s), is there not the slightest possibility that working for such a vast branch of government – with a bureaucratic life of its own and a very strong survival instinct – and relying on it for your pay cheque just might skew your judgement when it comes to changing structures and working practices? Apparently not.

Regardless, Jo Brand then whips out the first of her many personal axes to grind:

Continue reading →

Dispatch From Hampstead And Kilburn – Interview With Simon Marcus (Conservative)

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

 

When asked to name the current coalition government’s finest accomplishment, Conservative Party candidate Simon Marcus said “changing lives”, making reference to the economic recovery and welfare changes which Conservatives say have increased opportunities and life chances for many people.

The subject of welfare reform evinced some real passion; Marcus spoke about people who had been out of work for months and years finally receiving the counselling they need from Job Centre staff – “they’re in the business of turning lives around”.

On the NHS, Simon Marcus insisted that a state owned and operated healthcare service is still sustainable and financially viable in the twenty-first century: “There’s no question whatsoever, but you have to make efficiencies”. Marcus said that “free at the point of use is here to stay”, and spoke of his commitment to the NHS – “my children were born on the NHS, my dad was an NHS doctor – it’s in my blood”.

Simon Marcus also drew attention for opposing several key elements of government policy – he stated his firm opposition to the bedroom tax, but also to the renewal of Trident, the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

 

Click here for interviews with each of the 2015 candidates standing for election in Hampstead and Kilburn, and a summary of the recent hustings organised by West Hampstead Life.

Simon Marcus - Conservative Party - Hampstead and Kilburn - General Election 2015

Dispatch From Hampstead And Kilburn – Interview With Tulip Siddiq (Labour)

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

 

Tulip Siddiq displayed her knowledge of local issues (she is local resident of Kilburn) when responding to my question about gentrification in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency and its implications for affordable housing, proposing a national register of landlords to help safeguard the interests of people who rent privately.

When asked to look back at Labour’s most recent thirteen-year spell in government (1997-2010) and identify their greatest achievement, Tulip Siddiq highlighted “the NHS” and referenced the treatment that her father received on the NHS as her personal inspiration to join the Labour Party.

Surprisingly, Siddiq is Labour’s sole ethnic minority candidate in a currently Labour-held seat, though her chances of election are strong and (as this recent profile in The Independent suggests) she is well positioned to rise up the ranks of any future Labour government,  especially having been an early supporter of Ed Miliband.

 

Click here for interviews with each of the 2015 candidates standing for election in Hampstead and Kilburn, and a summary of the recent hustings organised by West Hampstead Life.

Tulip Siddiq - Labour Party - Hampstead and Kilburn - General Election 2015