Labour's Second Rate NHS

Health has been in the news this week. The NHS waiting list is back to over 1 Million. We now have 250,000 managers and administrators in the NHS. That figure is more than the total number of doctors and nurses! The Government keeps piling on extra targets and launching new initiatives. Each new target and initiative needs to be measured so there is relentless recruitment of yet more managers to do the measuring. The Government is spending more on the NHS but we are not getting the benefit where it really counts, in getting people the care they need when they need it.

It is time that National Insurance was ring fenced as the NHS Tax. That would give the NHS the secure and constant source of funding it needs. Next the NHS needs to properly regionalised, given the money to operate and central government needs to stop trying to manage every last detail from on high. Local people working with local health professionals know more about the health needs of their area far better that the Secretary of State for Health sitting in remote Whitehall.

The latest pronouncement on health from the Conservative Party just isn't thought through at all. Their idea of giving all patients a 'health passport' so that people get 60% of the cost of their operation if they go private will simply rip the NHS apart. For many residents of an area like Shepway, finding the other 40% (or funding the private insurance to pay it) will not be possible. The less well off will have paid taxes that the Government then gives to better off people in the form of the 60% subsidy! They themselves will be left with a 'second rate' NHS starved of the funds, doctors and nurses that it desperately needs. Is that fair, reasonable or practical?