Health - Stories/Information/Essays
So What's Wrong With These Public Services
The first thing that occurs is worthy of mention about the NHS if any analysis is to have the broad goal in mind of spending resources efficiently, is the very high expectations that one can find of what kind of role or service can realistically be provided and the ethical basis for it. Now I wasn't around in 1945 when the question of making the attempt to engender a reasonably comprehensive state medical service was politically engineered so I can't say to the extent that older folks would be able to, what the feeling was about it at the time, the precise nature of the Institution at least as far as the official line went, and am therefore that much less able to evaluate the question as to why it is the subject of an immense amount of contemporary complaint.
Older people do seem to be expecting more from it than those whose employment histories commenced during the Thatcher era and one hears so much in particular about the 'postcode lottery' of highly varying quality of service in different regions and stories about how some are refused what others might consider basic medical provision or even life saving treatment, go hand in hand with tales of obtained cosmetic procedures and state supported sex changes.
As someone who's still single if no longer quite so young and hailing principally from an environment that is urban rather than rural I tend to be more interested in things like how it is that some with no apparent complaints other than a mild case of oversensitivity can be dumped on state psychiatric care at several times the cost of a standard unemployed statistic (especially without Housing Benefit) whilst many other cases of people suffering quite seriously from nutritional deficiency, and the effects of economically imposed near solitary confinement, to say nothing of various forms of real and material deprivation can be expected to perform as selfless patriotic heroes: I think a lot of people especially those who contribute large sums to the Treasury would be quite interested to see a clear-cut and simple regimen for dealing with such casualties (especially the genuine ones) of an ever faster moving pace of life, in these sort of cases one tends to think of the urban setting does one not, as the question of incapacity benefits and the like is a huge controversy all of it's own.
If there's something which I do find also worth observing aside from acknowledging that good medical research, services and practises have always been an intrinsic goal of any society with a minimum degree of self awareness and self identity, it is the fact that, and I do say this with reference to much of the confusing contemporary debate; medical personnel are by their very nature in being involved in the study of volition, not practically amenable or available to the orders, dictates or suggestions of a politician who is not also at least a skilled or informed amateur in an appropriate medical field.
The point of course is to say that we hear so much about what sort of funds the NHS is consuming and how: if you read a lot you may be able to glean such snippets as the allegation that all the funds so far pumped in by successive Labour ministries have only so far just about paid off the Services' debts. In any case, I've absolutely no doubt that everyone who contributes to the NHS wants it's money spent on the provision of medicine and not on keeping managers and clerks in jobs, much as this might be desirable for a semblance of normalcy in the employment market.
One only has to ponder for a few moments that the question of how the NHS should be run is an incredibly huge question of which one person could probably only seriously contemplate studying one branch, department or aspect of NHS provision without taking a significant proportion of a lifetime to produce anything worthwhile. It would be nice to think that we didn't have too much to be of awful concern, but we do get stories about falsification of figures and statistics and the Harold Shipman case has shaken public faith in the system quite understandably. No doubt most of the individuals in the world today perhaps half of whom cannot afford many basic medicines would consider the British NHS utterly marvelous, and there is definitely no questioning some of the genuinely high minded ideals behind it's inception, or the fact that it has survived fifty years in some semblance of a recognisable form, which many publicly managed endeavours have failed to.
I see that the new Tory Leader Ian Duncan-Smith has mooted the suggestion that the whole concept of the NHS is misguided and impractical though it seems only fair to point out that mine was a very singular case: most of the so called forms of 'welfare assistance' provided to 'unfortunates,' is on the basis or understanding that the landless recipients must be slow witted and illiterate which I find patronising and rather insulting. This raises yet another fresh set of questions about the role of the 'welfare state' and, it would be a destructive and pointless oversimplification to say our attitudes toward the welfare state. What I feel is important here is not a pointless overemphasis of the public's ability to see and know, which such an asseveration would be, but to differentiate usefully between what are genuinely the representative feelings of the public, as and when they can be identified, and the opinions, not so much of the governing class but rather let's say, the political nation : also the preconceptions of the journalistic fraternity which arguably defines the attitudes of both the others. Which is to say that it is an unfortunate fact of life that in the world we live in today, what is important is not the truth itself but what the truth is perceived to be !
Tuberculosis
7000 People in England and Wales have the disease which is statistically the most dangerous in the World today for adults and children and is spreading at the estimated rate of one person per second !