Health: Ten Reasons to celebrate our NHS

Now is the time to celebrate our healthcare system, fund it properly and hold the next government to account for its improvement. In a YouGov poll released in October 2016 some 54% of those surveyed said they were proud of the NHS and agreed that “it is the envy of the world”, while 41% answered that while it may not be great it is still efficient.

From cradle to grave the National Health Service has been here for us since July 5, 1948, and yet we have let it down. Despite being hailed by the public and politicians alike the NHS tends to under perform the public health services of similar countries, with the think tank “UK 2020” suggesting that 46,400 lives could be saved each year if the NHS took lessons from better performing health services around the world. But now is not the time to give up on the NHS or let it be sold off to private firms.

As Europe’s biggest employer the service sees a massive 1.5 million staff help a million patients a day using a hefty 20% of government spending. So why should we celebrate this huge and hotly-debated machine?

Free

The founding principle of the NHS is that its services are free at the point of need. Everyone pays the Government to provide healthcare for everyone regardless of their financial means.

That also means everyone ultimately owns the NHS as a self-contained system while insurance schemes like Canada’s use the money to pay private healthcare providers which exist as businesses designed to make money from treatments rather than provide value for money.

The payment for the service is comprehensive unlike many forms of national health insurance which simply subsidise high bills so that patients are left to pay more manageable sums.

Private patients still need the NHS

Much of the UK’s private healthcare relies on superior NHS support for expertise and equipment. The Sheffield teaching hospitals list the benefits that the NHS provides to private patients. “Having the resources and staff of a large and multi-skilled NHS Foundation Trust immediately behind you gives you peace of mind and confidence in your private care,” the hospitals explained. “We have unique clinical skills, expertise and infrastructure which cannot be replicated in private hospitals such as state of the art equipment and new facilities.”

Quality of care is helped by the huge number of patients the NHS treats compared to dividing the workload among smaller, private firms. “Certain procedures or investigations requiring specific clinical expertise, or the use of highly specialist equipment, are best performed using staff or equipment shared by all patients, such as specialist intensive care, imaging and emergency backup.”

If we don’t have it the NHS will pay for it

Since April 2008 if a patient’s consultant can convince a panel that a patient should benefit from proton beam therapy abroad then the NHS Proton Overseas Program will pay for it, including the patient’s travel and accommodation costs for the 8-10 week duration.

Meanwhile a £250m investment is providing PBT units at University College London Hospital and the Christie in Manchester opening in 2020. There are only 30 of these units in the world.

The NHS is stretched

We are struggling with the fact that we have an ageing population. The biggest impact is a rising wave of demand for NHS services as baby boomers are requiring more help.

Hospital admissions for 2015/16 were 28% higher than a decade earlier. The number of people aged 60 and over is expected to swell from 14.9m three years ago to 21.9m by 2039.

It has quite a task…

The NHS is the cure for our ill health and not the cause of it. Suggestions that the health service is to blame for the UK having lower life expectancies than most of Western Europe ignore factors like our lifestyles and diets, critical health factors that are the responsibility of each person rather than a national body.

A worrying 25% of the UK population was obese in 2014 while last year there were 3 million people suffering from diabetes in England alone. In 2014 the World Health Organisation ranked the UK as 25th out of 191 countries for having the highest consumption of alcohol per person.

 

Dedicated Staff

Time and again NHS staff go beyond their remit to help those in need. While being a doctor has long been a high-status job the role has also been consistently ranked as having some of the highest suicide rates of any profession. Doctors and nurses are also renowned for drinking to excess, which is no surprise given the harrowing situations they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Everyone knows doctors are high-earners but the emotional toll is more than money can justify. Nimesh Shah wrote in the Guardian that he earned £35-40,000 in his second year as a qualified doctor.

The problem was that he never actually left work when his contracted hours ended as the needs of patients left all staff committed to extra hours every day. “It seems to be ingrained in the culture of the NHS.” he said.

No One Takes Advantage of you

US patients give constant accounts of medical practitioners over-diagnosing and going through costly scans and treatments that are unnecessary.

That 10-minute slot at your GP may seem like you have been cast off the end of a conveyor belt without being given the doctor’s full attention but the NHS does not build in incentives for doctors to waste time and money dispensing unneeded treatments.

 

Contraception and Abortion

Birth control is an important part of the modern world and yet many countries including France and the US do not offer the pill for free.

Meanwhile the UK is ranked by the UN as one of the most effective countries for contraception thanks to its emphasis on family planning, second only to China, where its famous one-child policy is a different kettle of fish altogether.

When there are unwanted pregnancies abortion remains a controversial topic across the world but the UK legalised the treatment on certain grounds in 1967 and the NHS strives to make it available. Some 98% of UK abortions in 2015 were funded by the NHS.

Our Culture

The ultimate reason to celebrate the NHS is its central role in our culture. Some may call it naive propaganda but the pride that most Britons feel about the NHS saw it feature prominently in Danny Boyle’s 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. No other country in the world would celebrate their healthcare system like that.

The fact that MPs endlessly fight to come across as the biggest supporters of the NHS is a strong indication of its public appeal. How many people were driven to vote for Brexit by the bogus promise that leaving the EU would provide £350m a week for the NHS?

Maybe we’re just a nation of cheapskates who love a bargain but isn’t there also a deep comfort in knowing that every citizen of this country has a safety net which won’t let them down? That’s the fundamental reason why we love our NHS despite its flaws.

Prescription Charges are Fair

People collecting a prescription can complain about having to pay £8.60, often arguing that they have already paid for the NHS in their tax.

But that fee provides an important motivation to actually complete a treatment, and those charges raised £450m in 2010/11 in England, providing just 0.5% of the total NHS budget.

Patients who need medicine the most are often exempt from the charges as free prescriptions are available for conditions including pregnancy and long-term illnesses including cancer. People under the age of 16 or over 60 do not pay and there are other exceptions for people on benefits or on the NHS’s low-income scheme.

 

by Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

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