Comatose consensus

Our National Health Service is one of Britain's key institutions.

How many people would have died without the hundreds of helping hands across hospitals all around the country? How many births may there not have been?

We should be proud that this country is committed to providing a health safety net to its people. But we should not let sentimentality about the past obscure the reforms necessary for future success.

Reform will not come by name calling or by foreigners intervening in a key domestic policy matter. Reform will only come when we accept the absolute truth of what choice in the provision of health care in modern Britain means.

It means that we should not all be shepherded into a stategarchy. But similarly it does not mean that we move to a system where you pay or die. That is morally and socially repugnant. There is such a thing as a middle road. This middle road is to allow those who wish to pay for care to do so without removing a penny from the National Health purse. Who loses?

Similarly we must move away from the ABBA-isation of our policy processes. We must move to active prevention of preventable diseases rather than relying on the responsiveness of one organisation. Why should a doctor be responsible for one’s unhealthy habits?

We must ensure that the NHS does not suffer from a brain drain. We need the brightest and best doctors and nurses to provide care to our people. We must pay these people a commensurate salary. Our emphasis as a society must be on the practitioners and not the pen pushers.

But how we define health care also has to change. Healthcare is not just about cancer and heart disease. It is also about mental well being and social care. How we treat these elements also says a lot about our social morality.

Above all else the debate about the NHS’s future cannot end come the end of the present “war of words”. In fact we should see it is the beginning of ending the comatose consensus that has existed since the NHS’s conception in the rubble of 1948 Britain.