RUTH SUNDERLAND: The chancellor has a bitter pill to swallow about the NHS
Rachel Reeves’ left-wing budget was supposed to put the economy on a stable course, but to the surprise of almost no one, it did nothing of the sort.
Her mantra of āinvest, invest, investā actually translates to āborrow, borrow, borrow.ā Much of her headlong rush to spend and borrow to increase the size of the state is designed to pour money into the gaping maw of an unreformed NHS.
As anyone who has recently had the misfortune of needing medical treatment knows, it is deeply flawed, despite the best efforts of many brave workers.
More money alone won’t solve the problems – it will only further impoverish taxpayers and the NHS will still be in a mess. There will be a Ā£22.6 billion increase in the daily health budget this year and next, and a Ā£3.1 billion increase in the capital budget.
These very large sums of money are not tied to performance targets. The blame, of course, is placed on the supposedly evil Tories and what Reeves calls their ‘austere’ approach to the NHS.
Deeply flawed: Much of the Chancellor’s headlong rush to spend and borrow to increase the size of the state is designed to pour money into the gaping maw of an unreformed NHS
The healthcare system is, of course, still recovering from the strain placed on it by the pandemic, a global plague that cannot plausibly be blamed on the Conservative Party.
The government will publish a 10-year plan for the NHS this spring, which will set out a blueprint for a shift ‘from hospitals to the community’, a move to digital and a big push for preventative health measures. These are all sensible directions to travel, but extremely difficult to implement.
And the biggest problem with the NHS is not the lack of money, but the strange way in which a wasteful and dysfunctional institution has become an object of national adoration.
Any criticism is considered heresy. The ‘free at the time of need’ approach should not mean behaving towards patients as if we were powerless paupers. Yet we are supposed to be grateful for any attention we receive, no matter how inadequate.
Demands on the NHS will only increase further due to an aging population and the post-Covid wave of long-term illnesses.
There are 2.8 million people of working age who claim they cannot do work due to chronic ill-health ā a phenomenon endemic to these islands: other countries have seen a drop in numbers as Covid receded.
The budget included a Ā£240m package aimed at ‘helping’ the sick and disabled into the labor market, and a ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper is in the pipeline. But behind these fine words lies the reality that the NHS for Labor is not just about patients.
The government is equally, if not more, concerned with the interests of its 1.7 million workers, many of whom are union members.
NHS staff should be well paid and given a pension, but the profitable part of the economy is heavily taxed and private sector workers are treated with contempt.
Anyone who has saved to pay for private care in the event of a medical emergency is so despised by Labor that they are now labeled a non-worker.
Labor seems to think that Britain should consist of a healthcare service with a nation attached to it.
Individuals and businesses should not be blatantly bled dry for tax revenue, only to find that when they need the NHS they are abandoned.
The point about the NHS is that it is here to serve us ā all of us ā not the other way around.
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