Politics
Britain's beloved NHS has been brought to its knees by the Conservative Party. Then the COVID pandemic hit
The UK election is less than a week away and after 14 years in power the Conservative Party is set to lose.
Topping the list of public grievances is the country's declining National Health Service and its desperate lack of funding before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
A massive inquiry is currently underway to examine the UK government's handling of COVID-19, and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has admitted “there were unquestionably things we should have done differently”.
The COVID-19 years are shaping up to be one of the most terrifying and deadly periods in British history, far deadlier than the German bombings during the Second World War.
More than 232,000 people have died from the virus, hospital wait times have reached record levels and the health system is still struggling with a backlog of patients.
But Britain's health system was already woefully underfunded and ill-prepared when the pandemic arrived.
So how could the NHS have been allowed to fall into disrepair and bring it to the brink of collapse, just as disaster struck?
The vision of the new Bevan
The NHS is highly regarded in Britain.
During the COVID pandemic, Boris Johnson called it “the country’s greatest asset”.
“Our NHS is the beating heart of this country. This is the best thing about this country. He is invincible. It is fueled by love. »
Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson called it “the nearest thing the English people have to a national religion”.
It was founded in 1948 by a Welshman named Aneurin Bevan, known to everyone as Nye.
He was a die-hard socialist and clashed with almost anyone who wasn't.
Winston Churchill described it as “a projectile launched from the Welsh valleys.”
After Labour won a landslide election in 1945, Bevan was surprisingly appointed Minister of Health.
At the time, Britain's healthcare system was in shambles.
Some hospitals were run by charities, others by local governments, and still others by insurance companies.
This meant that wealthier areas of the country received much better care than poorer areas.
Nye Bevan was given a blank cheque to solve this problem and his proposal was extraordinary: all British hospitals would be nationalised and come under the control of the Health Secretary.
Using around 5% of the government budget, healthcare would become free for everyone in Britain.
Rise of the NHS and fall of Bevan
There was massive opposition to the NHS from doctors, specialists and hospitals, who until then had been their own bosses, but with money and compromise Bevan won them over.
Nye Bevan was on the verge of becoming a national hero and had a real chance of becoming the next Labour Prime Minister.
“Nowhere in any nation in the world is there a communist or capitalist health service comparable to [the NHS],” he said.
But on July 4, 1948, the day before the launch of the NHS, Nye Bevan reminded everyone of his activist roots.
At a rally in Manchester he said: “No amount of cajoling, no attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep and burning hatred for the Conservative Party.”
“To me, they are inferior to vermin.”
This decision completely overshadowed Bevan's achievements in the NHS. Even the Australian newspapers reported on it.
For years, Winston Churchill hammered it home every chance he got. Young conservatives have created “vermin clubs”. The Labor Prime Minister publicly condemned it.
The NHS rollout has not been perfect either.
It cost twice as much as Bevan had originally anticipated, as millions of poor people with chronic illnesses came out of the woods now that health care was free.
When the government tried to recoup some of the money by making people pay half the cost of dentures and glasses, it was the final straw for Bevan.
He resigned because of his dentures, but the NHS and his legacy live on.
Stagnant funding
Three factors have increased in parallel since the 1970s: the median age of the UK population, life expectancy and the cost of the NHS.
Yet as the need for services has grown, the NHS budget has stagnated in recent years.
Politicians and the public passionately defend the NHS, but British governments are constantly surprised by its cost and are desperate to find ways to make it cheaper.
When David Cameron came to power in 2010, he assured the public that he understood the importance of the NHS and that it could be trusted.
He promised to insulate the NHS from the austerity programme he was rolling out across Britain.
“We said five years ago that we were the party of the NHS, and now in government, by protecting the NHS from spending cuts, we are showing precisely that priority that we have talked about so much in our party.”
But the UK's ageing population means more doctors, nurses and funding are needed every year to maintain the same quality of care.
Waiting lists began to grow. Overworked staff began to quit and the NHS was unable to find replacements.
The Labor Party began attacking Cameron for creating a crisis in the NHS, which Cameron angrily denied.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
The median waiting time in English emergency departments fell from 2 hours and 9 minutes in 2011 to 2 hours and 55 minutes in 2019.
The waiting time for cancer patients between diagnosis and treatment has increased significantly.
For the first time in modern British history, life expectancy has stopped rising. In fact, for Britain's poorest people, and particularly for women, it has started to fall.
Too little, too late
Surprisingly, the person in the Conservative Party who seemed most aware of the situation was Boris Johnson.
For years he has called for increased funding for the NHS, often as a way to corner his opponents within the Conservative Party and advance his campaign to become prime minister.
He took office as prime minister in July 2019 and his government has outlined a plan to increase funding for the NHS.
“We are carrying out 20 new hospital renovations in addition to the 34 billion [pounds] more in the NHS.
But it was too late and the NHS was in crisis by the time the pandemic struck.
The effects were enormous.
During the first year and a half of the pandemic, the UK had the highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 of any major economy.
Non-elective surgeries have been postponed and wait times have skyrocketed.
There were too few beds, too few staff and inadequate buildings to effectively contain the infection.
Life expectancy, stagnant for a decade, has actually started to decline for the entire population, due to COVID-19.
It’s easy to blame Boris Johnson for the high death toll, and many people do. They say he waited too long to put the country into lockdown and then eased restrictions too soon.
His decision to attend office parties while Britons were confined to their homes made it particularly easy to pin the blame on him.
But the reality is that the NHS was already in crisis before the first COVID-19 patient arrived in England.
Persistent problems
A massive inquiry is currently underway into the UK government's handling of COVID-19.
Boris Johnson has admitted his government made mistakes but defended its response.
At one point, four protesters stood outside the courthouse as Johnson spoke holding signs that read: “The dead don't hear your apologies.”
Further results are expected to be published next week, but regardless, it is clear that the NHS is still under enormous pressure.
There is a backlog of patients who have been unable to access care during the COVID years and the initial underlying problems in the NHS have still not been resolved.
One thing is for sure, it is an issue that will certainly play a role when British voters go to the polls this week.
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Sources 2/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-30/did-the-tories-kneecap-the-nhs/104018128 The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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