You do not have to search farther than the BMA’s first special meeting for twenty years to find out what is wrong with the NHS and why change must happen to protect the future of our universal healthcare in a modern world. The rubbish that many doctors talk tells us all.
The government must confront these people who think that it is is in order for patients to wait way past their appointment times to see their GP, then be referred like skittles to wait at clinics for hours to see a consultant, then wait again at home, in pain and anxiety, for treatment which is held up by weeks, months or even, in some dire cases, years. Through primary, secondary and tertiary levels of byzantine process, a task driven state within a state over managed and under nursed, offers a take or leave it deal to those who, through their taxes, pay a medical profession which has grown rich and complacent and, in the case of many of its senior members, works for it only part time.
Through a clever wheeze they whisk exasperated patients, who can afford medical insurance, out of their NHS queue and into their private hospitial just up the road, to get immediate treatment, which they charge £ thousands to provide. Meanwhile their absence from their NHS duties makes their queues grow longer still.
No, let us not kid ourselves any longer. In return for the money we spend on it, the NHS is inefficient and spendthrift and, outside an acute emergency, cannot deliver timely healthcare to the population to an acceptable standard. The Government is to be congratulated on grasping the nettle of the medical profession and its fury at being made to fall into a rational way of working. It must have the backbone to press on. No U Turns. Not even for the Lib Dems.