Questions we must ask to save the NHS
Widdecombe
AT LAST! Twenty years after I first asked for a major debate over the future structure and funding of the NHS, a cross-party group of MPs has signed a letter to the PM demanding a major parliamentary inquiry into the future of the NHS and social care services.
So far so good but there appears to be a presumption that the outcome will be ring-fenced funding from taxes and that the public will be happy to pay more.
Sadly that will not be enough. A penny on the income tax raises £5billion, which is a fraction of the NHS budget, which began life at a few hundred million and today costs hundreds of billions.
Any inquiry must start with a genuinely open mind, look at what other countries do and above all ask the question at the heart of all this: can we ever make it work if we never require anybody to pay?
Bevan’s vision has become confused with the vehicle he chose to deliver it, a now-rusty, creaking vehicle which will grind to a halt. The vision was that nobody in Britain should be denied health services simply because he or she could not afford them and that must surely be a vision that everybody still shares.
The vehicle was that everything should be provided free at the point of reception regardless of the person’s means and that was held to be sustainable because the founding fathers of the NHS believed that as we all got healthier demand would decline and therefore the state would always be able to supply everything free.
INSTEAD medical and surgical science have sent demand towards infinity, created increasing longevity and resulted in rationing in all but name.
Meanwhile the NHS faces choices from which we all wish to shy away. If it cannot do everything then what should it do? Should it supply drugs at vast cost to prolong life by a few weeks when the same money can buy back somebody’s vision?
Should it be spending huge sums to combat self-inflicted conditions such as obesity, alcoholism and drug addiction if that means kids queueing for cancer treatment?
Should it be spending at all on transgender operations, IVF and
IT’S BARKING MAD TO EXPECT A CAT TO HAVE A ROOM OF ITS OWN
THE rules concerning pet adoption are becoming dafter by the minute. Now Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, an organisation I would normally be proud to support, has turned down would-be owner Joe Lines because, although he had a pleasant garden his flat did not have enough space for the cat to have a room of its own. I thought it must be either an early April fool or a abortions when none of the problems involved threaten life or health?
There are no simple answers to any of those questions but they must piece of press exaggeration but no, he really did get an email telling him that he was being rejected for that reason. Indeed a spokesman for the charity insists that all new carers are required to offer a cat a “quiet, unused room”.
No wonder the shelter is so full of animals! Fortunately other cat charities, including the RSPCA, have no such requirement. All any be asked in any serious review as must that review also ask why those of us who can afford to contribute should not be expected to do so. animal wants is to be fed, loved and looked after. Joe Lines will doubtless get his cat elsewhere while the one he chose languishes on at Battersea, waiting for a gold-plated placement.
Battersea must be barking mad. The cats and dogs themselves would make a better fist of running the place.