We read that UKIP would like to offer people a choice of how they wish their health care to be delivered. “Patient choice in a monolithic government funded system is one of the greatest challenges now facing the NHS and we believe that other models are worth considering to see whether lessons can be learned from abroad. We reject the US model of healthcare but have in mind particularly those of Holland, Germany and Australia, which appear to offer more choice, shorter waiting times and objectively better health outcomes at comparable cost and have been praised for their lack of bureaucracy”.
You cannot square the circle. Universally available healthcare. High quality state of the art treatment. Timely treatment for all. In a cash limited system what must go? The first: should we limit those who have access to free care, if so on what grounds? The second: should we deny high cost treatments such as phenomenally expensive cancer drugs or liver transplants, if so which and who decides? The third: should we go back to long waiting lists in the knowledge that patients will fall off either by perishing or buying the operation?
So what do we have to sort this out? A succession of Secretaries of State who are either incompetent or more interested in scoring political points than sorting things out. The 2 main parties have certainly lost the plot.
Guido encapsulates the essence of the mud slinging well: “Last night around 50 Tory MPs were briefed by Jeremy Hunt ahead of today’s statement on Bruce Keogh’s mortality review. One attendee tells Guido they will call for Burnham to resign for “failing to defend patients”, accusing him of a “catastrophic failure” and insisting his position is “untenable”. The Tories will claim “these hospitals failed on their watch”, that Labour “ignored the warnings” and “instead tried to cover things up”.
And we know the current Secretary of State does not believe in the health service.
“David Cameron’s claim to back the NHS was shot down again yesterday as more Tories attacked our healthcare system.
Three of his Shadow Cabinet – Michael Gove, Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt – called for the health service to be dismantled. They claimed it was “no longer relevant” in a book, Direct Democracy, co-authored with Tory MEP Daniel Hannan. Mr Hannan sparked outrage last week by calling the NHS a “60year-old mistake” on US TV.”
If this is so let us see the courage of his convictions
Take the budget and see what it can buy and put it to the people in a referendum as they did in Oregon in the USA.
Do people want to continue the system of heathcare free at the point of delivery with the truth spelled out that this means wards with not enough nurses, a postcode lottery for cancer drugs and elderly relatives waiting for hours in A&E corridors.
Or do people want to control their health. Move to an insurance based system but one without exclusions to ensure universality and one with a defined excess for GP and A&E access to prevent abuse. As with Medicare and Medicaid in the US, but modified, we can ensure that those who are economically challenged have their premiums underwritten by the Government.
It is no coincidence that this equates to many of the UKIP proposals
Nice article Patricia.
I feel the NHS has become too hospital oriented. We need to put more into primary care, and into public health. because prevention and early diagnosis leads to better outcomes and is cheaper. So we need to go back to a 24/7 GP service. Rip up labours GP contract.
I am not sure about insurance. Acuraries will refuse to insure the elderly and terminally ill. Many will be unable to get insurance so the state will have to pick up the expensive service users. Insurance is not about insuring the inevitable, its about risk. Just try and get travel insurance if you have a pre-existing condition if you need to see how insurance companies work
Hoi polloi, after 65 years of being dependent on Government Healthcare from womb to demise, despite the many failings of such a system, are addicted to it – which was the deluded socialist Utopian intention from the outset. It ensures regular return of socialist governments, as we have seen.
It has become incrementally too costly and inefficient, despite the annual ‘reorganisations’ attempted by successive governments – some would like to dump it on the private insurance companies. They can’t, so the taxpayer will continue to pay through the nose for a worsening service – and a vast array of piss-takers will continue to take advantage of it.
Apart from anything else , it is a milch-cow for the idle and feckless. Drug addicts and drunks abuse the staff of it on an industrial scale and foreigners fly in to take the piss too. The parasitical bureaucratic elite that have benefited from the exponential increase in administrative boondoggles over the years are unlikely to let go; the beneficiaries of the ingrained PPP (PFI) schemes are not about to have their lips prised off the teats of the various Trusts beholden to them, either.
And what about the big Pharmas that have raped and pillaged the NHS since its inauguration? Think they are going to give up? They are the most powerful lobbyists in the world.
Nigel, like many politicians before him, can bravely suggest reforms but implementing them, against the consensus of NHS administration, staff and patients, is another matter and apparently impossible.
Even if a brave government (ha!) were to grasp the nettle, it would take at least three generations for the reforms to work through and the chaos that would ensue would be worse than the status quo ante. It won’t happen. so we will muddle along as the can continues to be kicked down the road.
Maybe the demographics that will change the landscape in the near future will sort it out under Sharia Law. Perhaps our putative Islamic masters would like to apprise us of their intentions regarding public health for us Dhimmis?
“…Move to an insurance based system but one without exclusions to ensure universality and one with a defined excess for GP and A&E access to prevent abuse…”
We must have exclusions, based on length of citizenship and prior contributions into the system.
Insurance excess payments will inevitablably fall to the taxpayer and neither health tourist costs or the long term treatment of HIV infected Africans and inbred Pakistanis should be accepted.
Frank P
I regret that you are almost certainly correct in your assessment, my earlier view seems facile in its failure to address the real issues, though Lord knows we do that often enough here.
The only way the entire mess will end is with the systemic collapse of government in the UK and europe.
Good piece, Frank P. D’acuerdo to everything you wrote.