Just got back from having my first COVID-19 vaccination. Started queueing at 10:40, pre-screening questions at 10:50, all done by 10:53 then I poked at my phone for 15 minutes while waiting to check I wouldn’t keel over from anaphylactic shock (I didn’t).
I was first notified that I should book an appointment in the form of a text message from sender “GPSurgery” on Monday 22nd February 2021:
Dear MR SMITH,
You have been invited to book your COVID-19 vaccinations.
Please click on the link to book: https://accurx.thirdparty.nhs.uk/…
[Name of My GP Surgery]
The web site presented me with a wide variety of dates and times, the earliest being today, 3 days later, so I chose that. My booking was then confirmed by another text message, and another reminder message was sent yesterday. I assume these text messages were sent by some central service on behalf of my GP whose role was probably just submitting my details.
A very smooth process a 15 minute walk from my home, and I’m hearing the same about the rest of the country too.
Watching social media mentions from others saying they’ve had their vaccination and also looking at the demographics in the queue and waiting room with me, I’ve been struck by how many people have—like me—been called up for their vaccinations quite early unrelated to their age. I was probably in the bottom third age group in the queue and waiting area: I’m 45 and although most seemed older than me, there were plenty of people around my age and younger there.
It just goes to show how many people in the UK are relying on the NHS for the management of chronic health conditions that may not be obviously apparent to those around them. Which is why we must not let this thing that so many of us rely upon be taken away. I suspect that almost everyone reading either is in a position of relying upon the NHS or has nearest and dearest who do.
The NHS gets a lot of criticism for being a bottomless pit of expenditure that is inefficient and slow to embrace change. Yes, healthcare costs a lot of money especially with our ageing population, but per head we spend a lot less than many other countries: half what the US spends per capita or as a proportion of GDP; our care is universal and our life expectancy is slightly longer. In 2017 the Commonwealth Fund rated the NHS #1 in a comparison of 11 countries.
So the narrative that the NHS is poor value for money is not correct. We are getting a good financial deal. We don’t necessarily need to make it perform better, financially, although there will always be room for improvement. The NHS has a funding crisis because the government wants it to have a funding crisis. It is being deliberately starved of funding so that it fails.
The consequences of selling off the NHS will be that many people are excluded from care they need to stay alive or to maintain a tolerable standard of living. As we see with almost every private sector takeover of what were formerly public services, they strip the assets, run below-par services that just about scrape along, and then when there is any kind of downturn or unexpected event they fold and either beg for bailout or just leave the mess in the hands of the government. Either way, taxpayers pay more for less and make a small group of wealthy people even more wealthy.
We are such mugs here in UK that even other countries have realised that they can bid to take over our public services, provide a low standard of service at a low cost to run, charge a lot to the customer and make a hefty profit. Most of our train operating companies are owned by foreign governments.
The NHS as it is only runs as well as it does because the staff are driven to breaking point with an obscene amount of unpaid overtime and workplace stress.
If you’d like to learn some more about the state of the NHS in the form of an engaging read then I recommend Adam Kay’s book This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry and if you’ve a soul it will make you angry. Also it may indelibly sear the phrase “penis degloving injury” into your mind.
Do not accept the premise that the NHS is too expensive.
If the NHS does a poor job (and it sometimes does), understand that underfunding plays a big part.
Privatising any of it will not improve matters in any way, except for a very small number of already wealthy people.
Please think about this when you vote.