A perspective on our beloved NHS
When we hear people clapping and banging pots showing support for the NHS, it is likely that only last year they would have had a different story. Then, hospitals were a place to of infection, premature discharges, delirium, and lack of care, lack of respect and lack of funding.
When we find out, now, that most hospitals have been unusually empty during the Covid-19 pandemic, the reality changes.
The Nightingale Hospitals have capacities hardly used. We assumed staff were rushed off their feet and battling against all the odds. Yet the old and infirm have been sent home, or to a home, to die and other ill patients have been frightened away from hospitals.
Polls still show a huge support for the NHS.
The predominance of fear has brought us into line, leaving us insecure and looking for reassurance. We respond to propaganda, peer pressure and fear. There is an almost religious support for a universal health service.
Our health service is awash with hypocrisy, contradiction and corruption, which goes relatively unchallenged. The British public are indifferent, unaware or too needy.
Our dream of an efficient, caring and equitable healthcare provision seems to have slipped through our fingers like sand. Yet people still clap.
Do we want an NHS run for profit of a few but funded by taxpayers, or an NHS run for the many but funded by taxpayers? A trick question.
The NHS has always had ‘private’ at its core. The knife of corruption pierced its heart of the NHS at conception, when self-employed professionals held the service to ransom, then posing as public employees, but earning large sums treating private patients.
Then there are the drug companies using their financial muscle to lobby the Government and bribe healthcare professionals. This national scandal has been swept under the carpet by successive governments, with politicians taking paid positions within the Healthcare industry.
Doctors involved in assessing which drugs should be prescribed to NHS patients are receiving up to £100,000 per year from pharmaceutical companies.
The Telegraph online by Edward Malnick June 2016
The NHS, as the biggest employer in the UK, is a feeding ground for greed. The only ownership we have is in paying the bills, and we clap.
But many still accept this situation lying down.
The vested interests have led to inefficiencies and misappropriations in ‘our’ NHS. The public are in denial and practicing self-deception. If eyes are open we see that reform is desperately needed. The PHE whose mission is “to protect and improve the nation’s health and to address inequalities”, has been an utter failure, unable to fulfil its mission. The bizarre handling of the Covid-19 outbreak has demonstrated that a complete rethink is needed.
We must understand our environment, and how we live in it.
The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable industries in the history of the world
Steven S. Sharfstein M.D. 2005
Are some of the drugs produced the answer to good health?
Who pays these academics salaries? Are medical scientists practicing engineering, or are they engineers, practicing medical science? Do they want to ‘fix’ nature or respect nature? A difficult question.
We know that research and advancements in science are necessary, but we should be aware, not just of what science can do for us, but also of what science can do ‘to’ us.
It can be argued that healthcare is losing its way.
With mental health, counselling and ‘hands on’ treatment is often needed. The Pharmaceutical companies have significantly reduced their investment in this sector. Litigation against the NHS has skyrocketed. The NHS paid out £2.8 billion for clinical negligence in year 2018/19. And still we clap.
The performance of the NHS over at least the last ten years has been poor.
What can be done to correct the situation?
Let’s be controversial.
Pharmaceutical giants must be excluded from decision making. They are beholden to their shareholders. To have commercial enterprises dictating the agenda through lobbying or price control is unacceptable. Patents must be challenged, or alternatives found.
When companies are going out into jungles and patenting nature, a line has to be drawn. This action will support many small independent research companies. The research work done in Universities must benefit the public not big pharmaceutical companies. AI will bring costs down and alternative medications will proliferate.
Protect health care from political dabbling and incompetent and costly quangos.
Any employee of the NHS must be stopped from providing private practice on the back of their NHS income, using NHS facilities to profit themselves at the public’s cost. One cannot serve two masters. If the NHS is to succeed then we must at least have honesty and integrity.
This fundamental principle was cowardly ducked by the Labour Party.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other, Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Mathew 6:24
What happened to those high morals and ethics as epitomised in the Hippocratic Oath.
But then the NHS will survive. People with a belief will put up with anything. Which is worse, the corrupt, inefficient NHS, or those who tolerate and allow the status quo?
This Covid-19 outbreak has shown up a number of existing inadequacies in our health service, and exposed new ones. Corruption, funding, PHE inadequacies, strategic fragmentation, a breakdown of the dubious private-public partnership, political and scientific incompetence, and scaremongering. The balance between personal freedoms and social responsibility has been upset. And still we clap.
We hope another important understanding will come from this, the ability of humans to work with nature, not try and beat nature. It’s not about money. A change in attitude is the air.
A revolution is coming in healthcare, and there may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight, and music, love and romance….
Lets be honest, to many are making a profit from the taxes that support the NHS. WE have drs who are also MPs Money for being an MP, money for working for the NHS, and money for using NHS hospitals and equipment to earn doctoring privately. Then we have people like R,Branson with exclusive contracts, that the courts will not allow to be cancelled, Putting a large fortune of tax payers money into his pocket.
In fact the NHS has become a gold mine for the wealthy. Time this kind of racketeering was stopped.
Kim a very valuable article.
I think there is a reasonable chance that with the right amount of publicity and political support we could see a rapid move to promoting vitamin D3 and other dietary supplements and universal prophylactic use of Hydroxychloroquine and for serious cases using it in treatment. If I and a lot of serious health professionals around the world are right and this was done, all lock downs could be ended and the number of people dying would be rapidly reduced to a trickle very quickly.
Just think of the huge economic ramifications of this. It is truly mind-boggling.
All that we are seeing now because a handful of corrupt health industry individuals are trying to hold back the supply of an out of patent dirt cheap drug so they can make tons of money out of a new alternative to hydroxychloroquine and their real goal, a universal vaccine for every person on the planet.
The money these people are trying to make with their corruption is a mere pittance compared to the money they are costing the world economy.
Of course there is also politics in this poison brew, with the CCP and their Marxist fan-boys around the world cheering it on and doing what they do best. Sowing their evil seeds of death and destruction.
Regarding what you say about vitamins, CHQ, etc, this is of interest:
Thank you LJ. What I like about this is that the Irish are on our side. My granny would have been pleased!
I was a young kid when the Attlee Government brought in the NHS, but remember well, due to comments of my parents, how people over used the service for free pills and potions, that they could have bought over the counter ! – That was long ago now, and many changes have been made to the working lives of Doctors and Nurses, with some good and some bad decisions made !
I don’t do the clapping. – Instead upon the death in hospital of my darling wife, and the exceptional care and kindness of Doctors and Nurses at my General Hospital in Northampton, I put together a lot of ‘goodies’ and took some to the Ward, and then again to the Night Shift at the Ward. – Recon that is better than clapping on my doorstep ! – It takes some getting over, when a Nurse can’t hold back tears at your loss ! – So unprofessional, and so human !
Make no mistake on this, those who do the hands-on with the ill, and those who do the necessary cleaning and transporting in hospital are the real stars of the NHS, and the most lovely people. – Many secretaries, medical equipment handlers and medical records clerks, all do a fine job, and it is never out of place to Thank them personally for their help and service. – All we need now is for Management to work with them, and to compliment their work, and for Government to evaluate afresh, the value of so many hands-on workers. – They are more than worth it !
Much is needed to correct Administration for health and hospitals, and probably post virus, we might get some changes made to make it all that it can be. – The right spirit exists, but it is well overworked and short staffed !
The human spirit is something I believe will win through. You are right about the human side, it means so much. There is no way I can respond to your comment other than I have no intention to cause pain. You must know that my words are aside from personal grief, which we have all suffered. We have to be objective, and although bad surely exists, right across the board there are good people, and good will overcome the bad. Thank you for your comment.
So very sorry to hear of your loss, Mr M.
Whenever my other half and I have had treatment, we have always written to say ‘thank you’ and named names where we could. Like you, I think that personal touch is much better than clapping, though I suppose it gives comfort to some.
An elegantly crafted article that generates empathy with any reader that still has a pulse.
Something has died, In Blighty it is faith in those that govern us. 2020 is the year of awakening, because 2020 vision indicates healthy eyesight. The loss of something dear to us ushers in the changes as we become aware, the loss of faith empowers the energy of change fits well with your choice of video I suggest looking at this one which started when the music stopped across the pond!!
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Your positive attitude is a ray of sunshine.;
As with all human activity supervision and understanding by customer is necessary
Stage 1 No committees, agreements ,amalgamations
stage 2 Remove the ” profession.” from medicine.
stage 3 Deskill, and compartmentalise
stage 4 Into prison with corruption.
stage 5 Repeat stages 1 to four in education.profession.
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I have an appointment with the Liver doctor tomorrow
It make’s one think but after all is said and done we the surfs have been led up the garden path for years
Reckon you’re right Kim on almost all points.
I wouldn’t put any faith in AI, if that is what you meant. Look at the name. It is artificial, ‘machine’ driven. Intelligence? machines have no intelligence. What it boils down to is that some human has input a program. That is the same ‘humans’ that have programmed the whole rotten corrupt structure we have now, designed to line their own pockets.
As for the Clapping – damn irritating isn’t it! Still I suppose it makes them feel happier.
Clap foe our nurses
That’s ok. If the clappers know it’s for the nurses. The nurses are almost the lowest paid of the ‘Indians’ in the structure. Big problem is – Too MANY CHIEFS not enough INDIANS.
Fully agree with the authors views. I have little optimism that there can be any meaningful reform of the NHS in light of the Covidphobia hysteria. The political class would rather be caught nicking the church silver than put forward proposals for the reform of the NHS.
Good article Kim.
A new generation has now been brainwashed into believing the NHS can do no wrong. At least they have unwittingly wrested the rainbow back from the gay mafia.
One thing a real Conservative Government would have done is tax exempt private health and dental insurance. I along with many thousands of employees get this as a perk but never take it up as I would end up paying a fortune in tax for the benefit in kind on top of the fortune I already pay in tax to support the Behemoth. Tories are too feeble to argue the case against the socialist press and fraudcasters though. Same goes for education. How about vouchers for both?
Big Pharma has turned many doctors into pill pushers. I realise many drugs are very useful and that their development and testing is extremely expensive on the bottom line and companies exist to create profits for their shareholders but this does not engender trust in the neutrality and motives of these players.
MWT Good points raised. I too am keen on a voucher system for education and healthcare and was dissapointed that UKIP did not go down this route to put some clear blue water between themselves and the establishment parties.
MWT Has made some good points in response to Kim’s article. I agree.