Cameron's hostage to fortune

Over at Political Betting, I caught sight of this picture.








PB points out that it's a bit Presidential, using the "I" rather than the "We". Full marks for using the word "cut" though. Brown continues to live in Tarquin Biscuitbarrel territory on that issue.

We all love the NHS with its cheery nurses and the aroma of urine and cabbage and Doctors with their  long black beards and funny foreign names and dodgy qualifications (is it 10ccs or 100? mm, better go for the full, how you say, monty). But, there are plenty of services that you can cut in the NHS. For a start, what about the fertility treatment? I cannot for the life of me see how you can justify it, and yet the annual cost of this is about £170 million, the figure cited by our old friend and brainbox, Dim Prawnarolo, in answer to a Parliamentary Question. Dim, is of course all for it, being passionate about wimmin and wimmin's ishoos.

Here are a few comments and facts from a recent article in The Telegraph:

the NHS is not made of money, or as Melanie Phillips put it, “it’s the National Health Service, not the National Happiness Service”. When this incredible organisation, a rightful source of national pride, was conceived (so to speak) it was intended to help the sick, not to provide liposuction for people who could easily lose weight themselves, sex-change operations and reverse sex change operations, pills for men who can’t get erections, boob jobs and fertility treatment, not to mention a staggering 180,000 abortions a year, each costing around £500 (the other 20,000 are paid for privately).

Largesse is a wonderful thing, but not if you are a ragged trousered philanthropist. The NHS should not be ring-fenced. It is, like everything else under Labour, overblown and over managed and highly inefficient.

The NHS already delivers less for the person who needs it for a one-off operation in their lifetime, or when they get old. A lot of money is spent these days diagnosing and treating gays with oral syphilis (an almost exclusively gay problem that is on the increase), who, one may argue, have inflicted this upon themselves by not having safe sex. But of course, you cannot get away with criticising their lifestyles, however much the taxpayer has to pick up the tab.

The NHS must contract. It must go back to the principles it first established, that it to provide necessary care to those who need it, not to those who cannot take responsibility for their own lifestyle decisions.

10 comments:

Jim Baxter said...

I sympathise with the view that the NHS has lost its way. The saftey net it provides encourages some people to live as they please and expect the NHS to fix whatever goes wrong as a result.

This argument usually proceeds by someone asking who decides who is worthy of NHS treatment and who isn't. Then someone says, oh, but that happens anyway, you think care isn't rationed already?

And so on.

I lack the brain to come with any new arguments. The politicians might have the brain but they lack the balls.

Rebel Saint said...

The NHS should offer an accident & emergency service only. Other things could be subsidised and a whole lot of things could be got rid of altogether. I've often wondered why the NHS provides free meals to patients ... they'd have to pay for food at home wouldn't they?

A lot of resources could be redirected into the much more sensible, cost effective and truly excellent palliative care services we have in this country.

boozer said...

I suppose if folk didn't smoke or drink or drive cars then we wouldn't be able to fund the NHS. National Insurance and income tax wouldn't pay for it. Most folk pay out far more for the NHS than they will ever get back. Working until June each year before their tax burden is paid off.

Jim Baxter said...

As a smoker I quite agree with boozer. Of course if we all expected a lot less from the NHS then we'd have to pay in a lot less. No politician will get to grips with trying to alter what the public expect. Not yet anyway.

Stewart Cowan said...

Absolutely right, Wrinkled. And oral and anal cancers are also rising due to the increase in buggery and oral sex. Here's what they're talking about in Australia:

Changing sexual behaviour blamed for more oral/anal cancer - “experts” want boys immunised

One could be forgiven for thinking that society has been re-fashioned to benefit Big Pharma.

Dave said...

The NHS will be the death of us all. It's overweight, top heavy, and gobbles up all our money.

I'm currently being treated at my local hospital cancer day centre about once a month. I walk through the corridors and see people in mufti walking along with files under their arm. I expect they can do that all day. I see posters and magazines that cost a fortune to publish that serve no useful purpose. I spoke to the unit manager about the level of burocracy and she said "Don't get me started". She needs one part time nurse to make the workload manageable but she can't have it. They're still hiring office staff and administrators though.

The most urgent need is to restrict access to its services and make the UK a less attractive destination for illegal immigrants. They don't flock here for the weather or the career opportunities do they?

Free health care is unheard of in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Is that why they all flock here?

subrosa said...

Will CallMeDave be smart enough to reorganise the top heavy NHS and put the savings into patient services? No.

I do hope Clarinda doesn't read this WW or she'll burst a blood vessel responding.

She does admit Scotland's NHS is in a slightly better state though, but with an emphasis on the slightly.

Myself I can't complain. At the beginning of December I was told I needed an MRI scan. My appointment arrived for 24 January but I had to postpone that as I was collecting family. I had my scan 6 days later.

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Yes, Subrosa, my experience up here has been positive. Like my friend Dave I had a scare, but unlike Dave mine was just that. They seem to deal with these things pretty well, and after all, that is what we pay them for.

banned said...

It worries me that dippy Dave wants to rebrand the NHS as the Public Health Service. Public Health is not about my health or yours, it is about that of the public at large.
Down this road are compulsory vaccination because that will be to the benefit of the public in general. Having failed to scare me into giving up smoking, drinking, reducing my carbon footprint, driving or eating as I see fit will they use Public Health to bully me in the supposed interests of everybody else?

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Banned, there is a very dangerous mindset among the Tories, as well as Labour, that we all need to be "managed". It's going to be like the feeling you get at Airports where you really are herded from the moment you step through the gate.

The other night, I was joking with Dr Weasel about the organisation called NICE, which has a say in prioritising treatment. I suggested there be an organisation called NASTY, which suggests people contribute to their treatment according to who is to blame for their condition! Wildly untenable of course, but fun to speculate.