Yes, NHS needs a complete overhaul
YES, the NHS does need a complete overhaul... and the sooner the better. The NHS has become a major embarrassment and it’s high time that we all removed our rose-coloured spectacles to take a long, hard look at our much-loved, bureaucratic, hopelessly centralised, and horrendously incompetent organisation which has also become an unaffordable hit to the UK economy.
Whilst our myopic politicians boast that we have the best healthcare system in the democratic world, in the glare of Covid-19 it became blindingly obvious that the nation was not only inadequately prepared for the pandemic but that Public Health England had lost all sense of proportion and perspective about the treatment of non-Covid and social care patients. In the summer of 2020, Dr Sarah Woolaston, then a local MP and former chair of the influential Commons Health Select Committee, pointed out that the inherent and divisive responsibilities between the public and private sectors, notably social care and care homes, had never even been formerly or adequately addressed! Was it overoptimistic to believe that managing a hugely intricate organisation like the NHS was ever likely to work?
Inevitably, the front line doctors, nurses and hospital staff have had to hold the line and deal with the muddle, and it raises the question that, not for the first time in our history, our lions were being led by donkeys? History tells us that any worthwhile review cannot be left to our squabbling political parties and their neverending appetite for political football. New initiatives still end up sacrificed on the altar of care free at the point of treatment and surely by now a much better informed general public must recognise that even this Holy Grail will have to be looked at again.
The overriding challenge is to create a radical formula which reconciles the cost of decent healthcare with what the nation can actually afford. So, we have to go back to basics and force the political parties and healthcare leaders to get together to create a blueprint aimed at putting all aspects of healthcare on to a truly sustainable footing. Perhaps this could best be done by a form of Royal Commission?
Is there an alternative? What do other readers think?
Loudon Constantine
Devon