By Isle of Wight Observer
Having dithered about my ailments for months, last week our local medical centre took pity on me. For the first time in years, I saw an actual doctor.
While walking towards the examination room, playfully, I asked to see some evidence that he really was a GP. This demand amused him, he replied saying he’d been thinking of displaying his hard-earned certificates on the wall. As he examined me, we discussed ‘physician associates.’ He then referred me to St Mary’s – again.
I’ve already waited months for the hospital to make contact for another less vital affliction, so let’s see what happens this time. If I don’t hear anything ‘in the next couple of weeks,’ rather than die quietly, I’m going private. Not only will this save the NHS the cost of my treatment, but possibly more of the £2.8 billion they’ve paid out in wrongful death and medical negligence claims.
Two weeks ago, I cut my arm with an angle grinder and took myself straight to a London hospital. After a 20-minute queue to book in, when my turn came, the receptionists first question was, “What nationality are you?” After failing to find my details, she told me I wasn’t “on the system”.’ Mercifully, an hour or so later, that didn’t prevent a delightful Jamaican nurse from sewing me up tidily.
Just like the last lot, this government is borrowing and spending colossal amounts of money. In 1987, my often-misquoted political heroine said: “Too many people think I have a problem – it’s the governments job to cope with it… They are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men, women and families.
“… [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, … that was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system.”
Maggie drastically reduced the size of the welfare state 38 years ago; evidently, it’s now out of control again. Mrs Thatcher believed that charity begins at home, that people usually took pride in looking after themselves and their families. That most of us didn’t want charity or handouts, we preferred working to provide for our loved ones. Every politician since Maggie has promised ‘reform’ while splashing more and more cash on everything and anything, including healthcare. From George Osbourne onwards, every single chancellor has handed the NHS more money without insisting on any waste and efficiency savings.
NHS demand is always insatiable. This year Starmer & Co will spend a colossal £317 billion on it. If the junior doctors have their way, that number will be higher still. The resident doctors’ latest 29 per cent pay demand comes despite their receiving 28.9 per cent extra less than a year ago.
Around half of consultants working in the NHS top up their incomes with a little private work. NHS nurses can be found moonlighting for agencies – who pay handsomely for shifts in the private sector. Good luck to them.
Around 20 per cent of the money the NHS spends already goes through the private sector. Long term, some measure of private funding, co-payment or insurance will be essential. Those of us already helping out by paying for private medicine should be praised not berated.
Only around a quarter of us claim to be ‘satisfied’ with the NHS. Hardly surprising when it’s management, processes and systems are often so dysfunctional. Eventually, our politicians will have to admit there’s no choice but to change the way it works.
The real question is, are you ready to hear it?