What is our health service for?

In my childhood, we were not a wealthy family.  We simply had to match our spending to what money we had coming in from my dad’s salary.  We struggled like many families did in the 60’s.  And sometimes it is only when you look back you see that the generation then simply lived by their means.  And got on with it.  Did it do us any harm?  Not really.  Did we borrow money to pay for the day to day living expenses?  No, we just didn’t get that new coat, the old one had to last a bit longer. 

It is the same attitude that exists in business. If we would like to buy an additional bit of machinery to make the business more efficient, but we don’t have the money, we would just make the old machine last a bit longer.  Or borrow money to buy a new one.  But what we would never do is borrow money just to run the business.          

But when it comes to the taxpayer funded National Health Service, all logic goes out of the window.  In the current situation where there are hospitals that are not hitting their target times, the immediate response is Accident and Emergency needs more money.  And perhaps it does.  Though if you do look more closely at the figures rather then the headlines, you realise that actually, 83.6% of A & E patients are admitted or transferred within four hours in October is, on the whole, not too bad.  Definitely a first world problem if you have to wait a little longer.  

And it is all the more impressive when you go and sit in an A & E unit as I have had to do on occasion recently and see people clogging up the system with things that a locally pharmacy or GP could have dealt with.  They are certainly not emergency cases.   But the response then generally continues, well, let’s just take more taxpayers money and throw it in the never ending deep hole that is the NHS.  No one says, as you and I would do at home, or a business would do, ok, what else can we trim in order to pay for this.  The assumption is, if the NHS needs it, extra money will be given.     

Of course, take money away from the taxpayer, and that means they will have less money to spend on a new coat.  Or a business on a new machine.  And if people have less money to spend, then shops will eventually feel the pinch and have to lay off staff.  And so it goes on.      

What nationalised industries have is what you and I don’t have.  A money tap that can be switched on.      

What should be happening in the current situation is, the NHS should say, well, A & E is more important so we will allocate resources to it and another part of the free at point of delivery health care provision be considered as less important so we will cut money to that.  Yes, there would be a hue and cry.   

But that brings us round to the question no political party is willing to address as they promise to spend billions on propping up an inefficient health care service that really has no thought out mission except to keep doing what it used to do and add more in.  What should the NHS actually be doing?   

What actually should be free at the point of delivery?   Everything?  From Abortion to Zenker's diverticulum and everything in between?  That’s the real debate we should be having in society.   

One thing is certain, the nation’s finances cannot be 100% spent on health care provision.  Our party leaders are being reckless in the extreme suggesting that more and more money is the solution.