It’s not more money that the NHS needs, but more vision. Most conditions that cost the NHS money are ones that often can be prevented through better diet, exercise and better living standards: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, Parkinson’s (the main reason is already known: a farming chemical that the government won’t ban).
People will always get ill and die. But often if councils created walkable communities with green parks, and made it easy for people to access organic plant-based foods, many diseases would not exist. Read NHS advice for better health.
We live in a society where older people are now lonely and bored. So of course many get dementia, even if they had active brains before (like any muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it).
Cancer is not just caused by smoking and the midday sun. It’s also caused by air pollution, water pollution and chemicals on fruits and vegetables, and in our beauty, laundry and cleaning products.
If people have free social care, then loved ones would not exhausted and poverty-stricken, to care for their parents, grandparents or children, in times of illness. If benefits were fairer, then people would be able to go out and spend money in local cafes and take holidays, which reduces stress (it’s known that most ‘ill people’ are poor people).
The History of the NHS
The NHS was founded in 1948 (thanks to Labour Welsh MP Nye Bevan, who grew up in a mining town). Employing nearly 2 million people, it’s been emulated worldwide, but its budget has soared with almost a third of all government spending now on healthcare, mostly due to ageing populations.
Diseases that used to quickly kill people are now replaced by conditions like dementia, which can mean people need medical care for years, sometimes decades.
Although there is no proof that the Conservatives want to privatise the NHS, the New Statesman and others have suspicions of ‘deliberate neglect’ (like pub chain landlords that deliberately let unwanted premises run down to become eyesores to sell off).
Visionary alternatives are no doubt needed to address people dying from lack of ambulances arriving on time and huge waiting times. But just throwing money at the NHS does not appear to be working.
The news always reports of old people sitting on trolleys for hours. Or ‘bed-blocking’. But why don’t they ask why people (only in their 70s and 80s) are in this state in the first place? It doesn’t happen say, in New Zealand. Where people are much healthier in older age.
The NHS is almost a religion, where you’re not allowed to say anything critical about it. It is wonderful that you can register for a GP (alas not a dentist) and get free medical care. But often you’re just thrown a pill, and some people waste NHS time, using doctors when they don’t need to, as they’re free.
Some forward-thinking GPs offer gym prescriptions and counselling for obesity and/or depression over anti-depressants, and councils could help by creating walkable communities with nice parks for good exercise and mental health benefits, which would save the NHS a fortune long-term.
