Forum topic: Coming to the defence of the NHS

I'm very pleased that you've recovered well, David. The NHS is not always perfect - how can it be, when it treats hundreds of thousands of people a day? But neither is private medical care, as this example of a child dying at a private London hospital demonstrates; www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/04/private-hospital-stars-investigation-seven-year-old-boy-died/

Private medical cover has limits and exclusions - and has to be paid for. The Moneysavingexpert website research shows that a fit non-smoking 70 year old would pay around £2,500 for private health insurance; www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/cheap-health-insurance

Far cheaper to have a publicly funded and provided health service without an internal market - where our taxes are spent on patient care, not red tape and bureaucracy.

Two things struck me from this thread: one, how we repeatedly hear of the UK’s (significant, long running and seemingly intractable) productivity gap versus our peer nations, yet on the other hand our NHS is the most productive (health) provider in the same major industrial nations. And secondly I wondered about doctors: I had understood they were from an undifferentiated secondary education pool, commonly trained by a finite pool of teaching centres ultimately completing in NHS sites before deciding on their specialist route and location; and then not uncommonly working on both sides of the public / private divide in the same week. And then I wondered what both implied in the context of the thread.

Quite a few of them have been trained in other, often developing, countries and attracted here by the prospect of more money and better working conditions. The finite and often small pool of trained doctors in those countries is thereby reduced, though the needs are usually greater. Should we be attracting such doctors away from their homelands in order to pander to our wealthy elites?

The huge Our NHS march in London on 4th March was covered rather inadequately in the media. This film, from the Real News Network, clearly shows the degree of concern about the future of the NHS among sober minded and experienced professionals.

By the standards of modern news reporting it is very long (a whole 11 minutes!), but some of the most authoritative voices are towards the end, so persevere.

I've been a bit slow in publicising this series of short interviews that Jenny Bourke did with retired Psychiatric Consultant Martin Blanchard, who lives in Palmers Green. These and many more interesting interviews with local people can be found on Jenny's website Palmers Green Tales .

Dr Martin Blanchard talking about his career as a doctor and the NHS

In this first film Martin introduces himself and describes how he came to be a psychiatrist.



Dr Martin Blanchard on becoming a consultant



Dr Martin Blanchard and the Psychiatric Day Unit

Martin talks about setting up an award-winning Psychiatric Day Unit. The unit then had to work within a much greater catchment area without additional resources.



Dr Martin Blanchard and the Psychiatric Day Unit

Martin describes how tricky it is to put a price tag on treating mental illness.



Dr Martin Blanchard and the Iron Mountain

Martin describes how business matters came to overshadow clinical matters.



How to run the NHS

In the final interview Dr Martin Blanchard talks about how it would be possible to run the NHS without blaming people for their own illnesses.