The NHS

Recently a thoughtful post from The devil's Kitchen caught the Gorse Fox's eye: The Devil's Kitchen: DK reforms the NHS.
GF notices today a further post on the subject from the Adam Smith Institute Swiss cure for the NHS.

Both of these deal with the thorny problem of what should be done about the NHS and the unsustainable finance model on which it is predicated. From the ASI we learn that Dr Berhard Ribiero (President of the Royal College of Surgeons) has the view:

Gordon Brown has doubled the NHS budget, but its productivity has hardly changed. Money, we now know, was not the answer. This system, almost unique to Britain (though Cuba has something like it) is a failed model.

The strains will grow:

There is the cost of the ageing population, and medical technology. With more focus on the 'work-life balance' and a 48-hour week coming in 2009, health work will be seen less as a vocation, more as just a job. A growing proportion of female workers in healthcare will demand more part-time working. It all means a larger workforce just to do the same volume of work.

And the ever readable Devil's Kitchen concludes:

The point is that central planning simply doesn't work, either in terms of cost efficiency or in delivery of the services. What I think that we would eventually see is more smaller, local hospitals; the re-emergance of the cottage hospital, if you like. This is because a smaller facility would require far less capital expenditure to build, would be easier to manage and would be more responsive to local needs.

This should be funded

Treatment would be paid for by private medical insurance. Most working people can afford £50 a month (especially if NICs were totally abolished, which it should be, and if my commensurate plan of bringing in a £12,000 Personal Allowance were also implemented).

"But what about the poor?" I hear you scream, "will they die like rats for want of a credit card?" No, for this is where we look at the alternatives. As part of unemployment benefits, the government will pay your health insurance premiums for you (as NI was essentially supposed to do). They will not pay it to themselves, they will pay to a private company, who will be chosen by you (or your existing supplier if you had one) so that you know that your premiums will actually go towards providing healthcare...

If someone should be left without medical insurance, then the solution is simple. If they need medical treatment, they will simply pay back the charges over x years, paying a monthly amount until the debt is paid off. If you can get free credit with a new sofa, then I see no reason why the same thing should not be the case with medical care.

Gorse Fox welcomes this reasoned approach, but fears that no government actually has the guts to debate this, let alone bring in the reforms to implement it. Bit by bit, the NHS will bankrupt the country because it is seen as some sort of holy cow by people with the rose-tinted nostalgic view of what it should have been, as opposed to what it is.

Gorse Fox would like to remind you all that the NHS is largest employer in Europe and the third largest employer in the world... and give you a moment to let that sink in.

[File under: NHS]