NHS

Is the NHS there for its staff or for its patients? If you assume that the staff are ordinary human beings there will no doubt be one or two saints or Mother Theresa types amongst them but most of them will be like the rest of us. Many of the rest of us have a pride in a job well done but those of us who also have to answer to customers for the service we provide feel an obligation to give value for money. Because we do not pay the NHS directly NHS staff do not feel the imperative of giving value for money to their patients. To get over this hurdle artificial or simulated obligations are put in place which frankly do not work. The NHS is a failing organisation and should be split up and privatised or at the very least each patient should be put into a position through some kind of insurance scheme to pay directly for treatment. In this way the appalling or at best indifferent treatment of the elderly and the too late diagnosis of cancer could be significantly corrected so that at least we have a standard of service at least the equivalent of the French and the Germans. I heard today that a fourth person I know has been diagnosed with cancer in the last 18 months far too late to do anything about it. In each case the person concerned had gone to their doctor complaining of this or that for several months (in one case over a year) before his/her complaint was taken seriously. I also saw how my elderly mother was on occasion left unfed and without water. Do not tell me that the NHS is a great institution - it isn't. Do not tell me that most of the people in it do not run it for themselves when it is all too evident that they do. Some politician should have the guts to say so but no one dares criticise those who have been given an elevated status as some kind of angel.