A recent spell in hospital for the first time was an eye-opener.
Having spent years representing health workers it was instructive to see first hand how backroom staff work as a team with doctors and nurses on the front-line. My own knee operation and after-care have been superb. I now personally understand why the NHS commands extraordinarily high levels of public satisfaction.
But the NHS is veering towards what one senior health manager calls "a bloody awful train wreck" thanks to broken government promises and increasing demands on it. I fear that without some TLC the NHS will fall apart.
Free health care at the point of use is an extremely popular principle and envied elsewhere in the world which explains why successive Tory leaders have often been forced to claim that it is safe in their hands.
David Cameron exempted health from his foolish cuts package and pledged real increases each year. but Cameron's promise turned out to mean just 0.1% above inflation.
This meagre increase just about meets the pledge but is a sham when you study the small print because the costs of new medical equipment and medicines exceed inflation. The NHS needs annual increases of 3% just to stand still.
But society is not static. It is now predicted that one in six of us will reach 100. This is a positive change overall but living longer also means more years of illness and disability, which will put great pressure on our health services. At the other end of the spectrum, higher birth rates will add more pressures to health budgets.
Labour's drive to encourage people to quit smoking have succeeded with over two million people giving up. This will reduce overall health costs. We should expand such campaigns and focus on obesity which is why cutting school sports is so ludicrous.
You then have to add in the fact that the government has ratted on yet another promise by proceeding with a deeply unpopular top-down reorganisation of the NHS.
The backbone of the NHS, its primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, will be broken up and replaced by GPs' consortia which will purchase health care. We are already seeing an exodus of experienced managers who are then likely to be hired by GPs in a merry-go-round of mayhem and needless spending .
Health experts estimate that this will cost £3 billion, although the government is seeking to con us that efficiency savings will absorb this bill. If such savings fail to materialise there could be an annual shortfall of £10 billion. There are already reports that so-called non-urgent operations to people's knees, hips and cataracts are being deferred whilst the targets for treatment are being relaxed. Waiting lists will increase.
Durham consultant Dr Nigel Speight recently told the Journal that the planned organisational changes would mean the "death of the NHS." He also rightly says that the NHS ...
"... will be gradually destroyed by a process of creeping privatisation until all that is left will be a second-rate safety net with most services being provided by private for-profit health maintenance organisations. The doctor-patient relationship will be in danger of becoming damaged by mistrust on the part of patients, who will suspect that their doctor might be financially motivated, either when talking the patient into some form of treatment or when declining to provide some treatment."
Even the government's own supporters reckon that these reforms are going too far, too fast and ask that they are phased in.
The NHS was a great Labour creation and we had brought it back from the brink after nearly 20 years of Tory neglect. Keeping pace with rapid demographic and technological change requires surgical precision and co-operation rather than competition between doctors, nurses and patients. Sadly, ministers are chopping and changing with their size 14 hobnailed boots on. They should remember the first rule of medicine - do no harm.
Newcastle Chronicle and Journal
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