The NHS is no longer the outstanding institution it once was, or at least it still is in the left's eyes. It was a model appropriate for 1948, but not 2018. This year will mark seventy years since the NHS was established, but it is important to remember the context it was created in.
Our health service was created three years after the Second World War. Britain was poor because of six years of horrific conflict. The Attlee government brought in sweeping reforms designed to prevent the UK from being crippled by a sluggish economy and debt. The population was smaller than it is today.
In the 1970s, the quality of British healthcare drastically improved.
"The King's Fund anticipates health spending will reach twenty per cent of GDP by 2050"
Times have changed. The NHS cannot go on like this, especially when the King's Fund anticipates health spending will reach twenty per cent of GDP by 2050. The population is significantly larger than it was in 1948. And no matter how much cash any government pours into it, it is never enough to prevent the NHS from reaching 'breaking point', as the left and the press scream every year. This is the problem though. Whether it is a Labour or Conservative administration that has tried to reform the health service, the media claim it is privatisation.
No one wants an American healthcare model. Thirty-five per cent of Americans fail to pay their health bills. Is this really a model the UK should copy? There are 165 other nations whose health services Britain can emulate.
In Germany, the government, the private sector and charities each provide a third of the costs towards their healthcare system.
If the NHS was deregulated, GPs would be allowed to charge for appointments, foreign visitors would be billed for using a British hospital and private healthcare would be more affordable. The latter solution would ease pressure off public hospitals and save taxpayers money. Cancelled operations cost the NHS £600 million-a-year as it is.
Britain's healthcare will not improve until future governments are bold enough to tackle its problems. The NHS is the third worst healthcare system in the world. It is time to change that.
