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Far be it from me to politicize this blog, but I have great trouble understanding how anyone can brand a system based on the principles of providing healthcare for all as ‘evil’.Â
The UK NHS has many flaws. It is over-stretched, weary, beleaguered, underfunded, occasionally incompetent, occasionally misguided, in parts outmoded, over-managed and often frustrating. But it is not evil, in any sense of that rather incendiary word.
I have had occasion to need the NHS a few times in my life. Sometimes I had to sit in a waiting room longer than I would have liked. Sometimes I felt that I was getting a little less than the 100% attention I thought I deserved. But if I ever felt like complaining, I just reminded myself that I could be in the US and not have health insurance, “so thank God for the NHS.â€
Barack Obama said recently: “Every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they’ve got… They use their political allies to scare and mislead the American people… we can’t let them do it again. Not this time. Not now.â€
Rousing words, and ones that confirmed a widespread image of Obama as a man of conviction, passionately committed to the reform he was elected for. But it looks as if he will struggle to see his vision through. Of course he will, for the very reasons he outlines above.
I would ask those fiercely anti-reform politicians to be careful with the word ‘evil’. If they think that valuing the life and health of the poor as highly as the well off is ‘evil’, then perhaps their concept of good and bad has been skewered somewhere along the line.
Of all the pharma CEOs I’ve met and talked to, I can remember a good few who had their arguments with the UK NHS. But I don’t remember any of them calling it evil. Â
Julian Upton
One Comment
The word “Evil”, (Wikipedia) meaning: Is a broad term used to describe what is perceived as intentional negative moral acts or thoughts that are wrong, cruel, unjust, or selfish. Evil is usually contrasted with good, which describes acts that are kind, just, or selfless.
- If sick patients are made to wait for three months to see a consultant,
- Partially blind old man with cataract cannot get his cataract removed even after waiting patiently for a year
- anxious distressed mother with a sick child has been made to waste time talking to NHS Direct, then referred to walk-in centre where a nurse turns around and tells her to go to A&E because they don’t see children less than 2 years old. This mother is made to wait for two hours for her child to be seen by a junior doctor, who fobs her off as mother who is wasting time.
How else could we define these scenarios?
I find it hard and distressing to hear these stories day after day from patients and we are unable to do anything. Since the politicians hijacked the NHS and brought in administrators to dictate what we do, they have damaged good doctor-patients relationship. Now they are trying to defend their act and blowing their own trumpet.
As doctors, we have medicines that only control symptoms and now we are soon drifting backward to “Pre-Antibiotic Era”. If I cannot provide support and re-assurance, what are we doing to our patients?