The myth of ‘our’ NHS has now collapsed
Well, that was quick. From “envy of the world” to broken-down shambles delivering an appalling standard of care, particularly to those who need it most: children and the elderly. The report by Lord Darzi into the NHS should have caused national shockwaves, but it confirms what we suspected. The myth of Our NHS, so assiduously burnished and jealously guarded by Labour and its media acolytes, has been crumbling for a long time.
Those of us who have occasionally dared to raise the awkward matter of the UK coming in the bottom three of 18 developed countries in survival rates for the common cancers, strokes and heart attacks have been shouted down as heretics. Why are Brits so much more likely to die of these diseases than the Portuguese or the Italians? We’re not supposed to ask. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, it’s our job to Save The NHS not wonder why it’s so terribly bad at saving us.
“You hate the NHS,” was an accusation spat at me the other day. Quite right, I loathe it. Who in their right mind could love a Soviet Socialist healthcare system, a monster of ineptitude and indifference, that Darzi found was responsible for 14,000 avoidable deaths a year caused by agonising waits in A&E alone? And all those tumours blooming like evil cauliflowers inside younger people, like Jon Chappell who told me he thought that, if his growth was really serious, the doctors would act quickly. Wouldn’t they? By the time they operated, a year later, Jon had Stage 4 cancer. The NHS was responsible for his death sentence at the age of 32. You could fill a library with heartbreaking stories like that.
“But Tory cuts!” squeal the NHS zealots. It’s certainly true the Conservatives did nothing over 14 years to reform a system which was clearly on the verge of major organ failure. It’s also fair to say that if a Tory minister had plucked up the courage to say half the things about the NHS that Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting have mentioned since entering government they would have been hit with strikes and a furious backlash from the BBC and media signed up to the myth.
But what about those evil Conservatives underfunding the NHS? Not according to the International Health Care Outcomes Index. Between 2020-2021, the UK saw the biggest increase in health spending as a proportion of GDP of any country in a global league table. The UK is now 10th out of 19 comparable countries for spending on its health system as a percentage of GDP, putting us mid-table. But we get terrible value for money: the British taxpayer gives the NHS £165 billion quid a year. In return, the NHS gives us the second-worst life expectancy among 19 similar countries.
Why is NHS CEO Amanda Pritchard not sacked immediately by Wes Streeting for gross mismanagement? No private-sector boss could survive a report as devastating as Lord Darzi’s. No accountability, no consequences, no improvement.
Until yesterday’s report, the public could not possibly deduce from all the slavish propaganda and I HEART NHS fatuities how dire things really are. We still have many fantastic doctors and nurses and they know. It mortifies them. This is what Jeremy wrote: “I’ve worked in the NHS for 35 years (22 as a consultant) and it is a system that just doesn’t work. But, now, it’s just awful, Allison. AWFUL. European colleagues used to laugh and poke fun about the NHS and me being a British cancer specialist. ‘Jeremy, you won’t be getting this cancer drug for a few years... Ha ha!’ Now, those foreign colleagues don’t laugh any more. They simply DO NOT BELIEVE how bad UK healthcare is. ‘People with critical coronary artery diseases have to wait a year for surgery, Jeremy? [Such surgery should happen within hours or a day at worst.] Non, c’est pas possible!’”
Non, c’est pas possible. Not in France it isn’t, not in Germany, not in Australia, not anywhere in fact with a decent health service funded by mixed provision (state and private) and with providers in competition. A health service which puts patients before ideology and backside-covering managers. Just think of it. The National Health Service used to be a joke in international oncology circles; now we are objects of pity.
And the human suffering, my God, the suffering. A lady in her eighties (my mother’s friend) left lying on the floor a month ago with a broken femur for twelve hours as she waited for an ambulance.
Charlotte told me about her daughter Emilia, who was in agony. After hours in A&E, with her mother hassling and begging for a CT scan (refused), the GCSE student was diagnosed with constipation and sent home. Soon after, the pain returned and mother and daughter were back in the A&E warzone. Emilia lay on a makeshift bed of chairs for nine hours, vomiting and crying out for someone to please help her. “No one came to our aid, it was unbelievable.” It turned out the sixteen-year-old had ovarian cysts which had twisted and one ovary had also twisted, cutting off the blood flow. “She would have been experiencing pain similar to a heart attack,” a doctor told Charlotte when they were finally allowed a scan. Emilia lost one of her ovaries; the fate of the other is in the balance along with her fertility. No follow-up. Course not; it’s Our NHS. Count yourself lucky to get out alive.
It has taken a report by a Labour lord to challenge the left’s precious NHS myth and to finally get the media posing questions those on the right were vilified for even asking. Don’t get your hopes up. “Nothing that I have found draws into question the principles of a health service that is taxpayer funded, free at the point of use, and based on need not ability to pay,” says Darzi.
Nothing except the fact that the NHS doesn’t work, and will never work, and the British people will go on suffering and dying before their time. Non, c’est pas possible!