Moaning about the NHS is as much a national pastime as discussing the weather. But while it may be okay for British taxpayers to air the odd the grievance or for our own newspapers to relentlessly hype dubious ‘superbug’ scandals, recent events have revealed a steely national pride in an institution that remains one of the finest achievements of any British government.
Just in case you have been languishing in a beach-induced news vacuum, here’s a quick recap. Several US republicans and commentators, opposed to president Barack Obama’s plans to extend health insurance to the 46 million Americans who currently slip through the net, have cited a series of scare stories about our heath service as evidence of the dangers of socialised healthcare. Many of these are wildly inaccurate. There has, for instance, been much written about the existence in the
Leading the throng of senior British medics and politicians now mounting a stateside defence of the health service is former health minister, surgical pioneer and healthcare technology champion Lord Ara Darzi, who has been giving a series of interviews with US television stations.
Although Darzi has chiefly been despatched to debunk and rubbish some of the more ludicrous claims flying about, his involvement is a reminder that, when it’s not providing healthcare to all British taxpayers, it acts as a critical spur and source of funding for the research and development that has made the UK a centre for medical engineering excellence.
Darzi himself, through his NHS-funded research at
NHS funding and research has also played a key role in the development of the digital healthcare technology pioneered by Imperial College’s Prof Chris Toumazou. Expected to be a key element of future healthcare provision, this is another technology that has been given space to grow by the health service.
Before we’re accused of mounting yet another jingoistic defence of the NHS, we should also note there are shortcomings to its approach to innovation: the monumentally expensive and much-derided £2.4bn Connecting for Health IT project is a notable example of things going awry. It is also frequently criticised for not embracing ‘life-saving’ technologies quickly enough. However, responding to this point in an interview with The Engineer last year, Darzi made a prescient comparison between UK and US healthcare when he suggested that that the wider dissemination of healthcare technology in the US is often more to do with marketing than clinical evidence.
Jon Excell
Deputy Editor
The NHS is great in principle but fails to deliver efficient services – just look how money has been thrown at the NHS and totally wasted over the last ten years. It’s choked by bureaucracy, political dogma, and unfair supply of post code lottery services.
The UK has a health service to be ashamed of compared to our European neighbours. Few politicians are brave enough to say that the NHS is failing – when it is. The whole of the method of health care needs to be looked at, maybe including a national insurance scheme that customers can use to buy basic health care, and top up as required. Overall this would bring more money into the health care system, and making hospitals compete like any other company would bring efficiencies.
Sorry if this not what some want to hear, but the truth seldom is.
Waffle, waffle, waffle! NHS this, NHS that. Why can’t people see through the smoke?
Tens, no hundreds of thousands of people are cared for each year by the NHS. How many get a bad service?
Statistics, (lies, damned lies and statistics) can show what you want. How many reports show the up side of the NHS?
It’s not a perfect system and it could do better, but can’t we all? We are human after all.
We are told that absenteeism in the NHS is over twice the national average. That may be so but have you ever stopped to think of the work the staff do?
They don’t work in an office, they don’t work in factories or work the soil. They deal with people, sick people, people who need help. They attend to the relatives who are worried sick about their loved ones. Most staff deal with the stress, the low pay and conditions extremely well.
Be thankful we have such a wonderful system, look around at your friends and family who live, play and have full and active lives because of the NHS. Think what it would be like without it.
You can understand why they thought Prof Hawking is American. It’s his accent.