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Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Tag: healthcare

  • Wes Streeting, Please Up Your Game!

    mayberetiredpastor

    Wes Streeting, Please Up Your Game!

    The hearts of the wise make their mouths prudent, and their lips promote instruction.

    Proverbs 16:23,  The Old Testament

    We have just spent rather a lot of money on essential maintenance of our house. I knew that we needed to attend to issues that had been developing over the years. We replaced our roof a few years after we moved in and in memory it is still the “new” roof. But damp in certain spots and actual leaking during a heavy rainstorm this year convinced us that essential maintenance work was due!   Similarly, our external walls were showing signs of deterioration and some  repointing was in order. We were not prepared for the amount of work that needed to be undertaken when the builder came round and inspected the roof and walls! As we thought about it more carefully, we realised that our “new” roof was over thirty years old and that the brickwork on the house is nearing 100 years!  So, we bit the bullet and agreed to all the work. Now that the work has been done, we feel reassured that the house will be good for another 30 years and that what we pass on to the children will be worth passing on.

    Wes Streeting, the new Secretary of Health for England, has begun his term by asserting that the problems facing the National Health Service (NHS) cannot be solved by throwing money at it (1).  It’s disappointing to hear a Labour Party Secretary of State still deploying neo-liberal Conservative rhetoric when discussing the problems facing the NHS, even after a huge parliamentary majority has been won by Labour. The facts are indisputable, in every single year of the previous Conservative governments inflation adjusted spending on the NHS has been several percentage points below what is acknowledged as the stand-still spending requirement (2).

    Health economics is complex, but we can get some idea of the scale of the cumulative reduction in financial support for the NHS by the 35% pay claim of junior doctors to restore their pay levels to 2010 levels. We can reasonably assume that the overall funding deficit for the NHS must be on a similar scale. What would happen if our own household incomes shrank by a third over 15 years? Well, for one thing, the essential maintenance that my wife and I have just carried out could not be afforded and we would have increasingly significant problems with leaks and damp in our walls as the fabric of our house deteriorated.

    Which is exactly what has happened in the NHS. We know that waiting-times in the NHS are getting worse. What we may not understand is that a significant proportion of that increase is because the fabric of our hospitals is failing as timely maintenance could not be afforded (2). Power failures, leaks, unsafe buildings result in cancellation of procedures which increase waiting times. Staffing is, of course, another issue. The falling level of pay over the years means that more and more experienced staff leave for better opportunities elsewhere.  This not only means that more and more very expensive private sector (agency) staff are used to fill the gaps, but that the NHS staff body is becoming less and less experienced and can’t work at the same efficiency as the experienced staff they are replacing. And, of course, the failure to properly fund adult social care means that, at any one time, more than 10% of hospital beds are occupied by patients waiting to be discharged.

    All of this is the result of inadequate funding. What Wes Streeting would be right in saying is that increased funding will not result in an overnight fix. There is no fix that could do that. These problems cannot be resolved overnight, or even, in the lifetime of a single parliament. But increased funding is absolutely essential for any improvement at all. To pretend otherwise is simply disingenuous and following the playbook of Conservative neo-liberal-speak. Wes Streeting simply has to up his game if he’s going to make a real difference!

    1. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/27175749/wes-streeting-nhs-major-reform-labour/ acc. 17:52 28.7.24
    2. BBC News – More money and staff – so why isn’t the NHS more productive?
      https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0dmvdmmv80o  acc. 15:55 29.7.24

  • The NHS and Christ’s Return

    mayberetiredpastor

    The NHS and Christ’s Return

    … that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

    Romans 8:21

    What has the UK National Health Service  (NHS) got to do with the Second Coming?  The Apostle Paul’s somewhat enigmatic passage in the middle of chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans reminds us that salvation is not just about us – human beings – it is about the whole of creation. Moreover, it implies that that salvation is, in some sense, in the hands of the saved – followers of Jesus. In other words, what we do, what we make and build and institute here on earth matters for the salvation of creation. It isn’t just a matter of the apocalyptic destruction of the old and the descent of the new from on high. 

    The NHS is intended to provide the best healthcare to everyone for zero cost to the patient. The NHS does not make judgements as to how you come to require its services, if you need healthcare, you get it. So, if you’re a smoker and need care for lung cancer you get it – no questions asked. You get it not because you deserve it, but because you need it. You get it not because you can afford it, but because you need it. And you get the best. It is funded through general taxation. Everyone contributes to the cost according to their ability. Everyone benefits. In Christian terms, the NHS is a ministry of grace. As such, it is most certainly an expression of the Kingdom of God. Of course, in the same way that Christians are not yet perfect, so the NHS is not perfect, it is a work in progress, just as an individual Christian is. But it’s end-point is the tree of life in the heavenly city pictured in chapter 22 of the book of Revelation where the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations and can be gathered by anyone whenever they have need.

    Christians often ask how long it will be before Christ returns, especially at times when turmoil seems to dominate the world. How long will it be before He returns and brings with Him the New Creation and the lion sits with the lamb? Romans 8 suggests that this is partly in our hands! The more we are able to put into place those things that are of the Kingdom the sooner will Christ return. So, if you are one of those longing for the return of Christ you should be fiercely protective of the NHS.  You must resist the worshippers of Mammon who would seek to disable, dismantle it; who seek to alter its fundamental nature and premise. The NHS must remain an institution of grace else Christ’s return will continue to be delayed.   

  • Here’s A Thought

    mayberetiredpastor

    Here’s A Thought

    Now, here’s a thought. Like everyone else I suppose, I get advertisements on my Facebook Feed. Unlike some, perhaps, I don’t particularly mind them, in fact, quite often I learn about useful things on the market I might not otherwise have known about (I’m a sucker for those useful looking gadgets that claim to be able to solve that very problem you didn’t know you had until that ad!) so, I hardly ever block ads.  

    Over the last year or so, I have started seeing ads. for private healthcare plans. For about £23 a month they appear to guarantee no waiting times for hospital procedures should you ever require them. I’ve not gone into the fine print so don’t really know what sorts of procedures are covered and what aren’t, doubtless there are many caveats and conditions, certainly they talk about surgery and operations, but this set me thinking.

    It’s no secret that the NHS is suffering from long waiting times for elective procedures, and reducing if not eliminating the waiting times is a major political goal for every party. These private health care ads. are basically suggesting that the cost of eliminating waiting times is £23 a month. If we multiply this up by the UK working population of around 33 million (1) this  comes to £9.1 billion a year. So, at the cost of £9 billon a year waiting times in the NHS could be eliminated, or so these ads. imply.

    But wait a minute, I hear you cry, the population of the UK is something like 67 million people, why have you multiplied by only 33 million? Well, not everybody requires hospital care all at the same time and these healthcare companies must have done the sums as to what would it cost to have zero waiting times for those willing to pay and for them to make a (probably) excellent profit. So I think multiplying by the working population will give us a reasonable stab at what it would cost to eliminate waiting times in the NHS. And, it’s just a thought!

    How much extra tax would we all have to pay to do the equivalent of taking out this monthly healthcare plan for zero waiting times in the NHS? The annual cost of the healthcare plan is £276. Average income according to the Office for National Statistics is around £35,000 (2). Taking into account the tax-free allowance this means an average tax increase of 1.2%, of course, some would pay less and some would pay more. It would be the government’s job to balance out the tax increase fairly between the less well-paid and the more well-paid, but an average 1.2% doesn’t seem much of an ask to eliminate waiting times. And that’s the beauty of doing this kind of thing through tax. By sharing the burden, all of us can benefit at a cost we can afford. A private scheme only benefits those who can afford it.

    £9 billion just happens to be the amount of surplus the Chancellor apparently had at this year’s budget. What did he choose to do with it? Devote it to eliminating the waiting times in the NHS? Of course not, he decided to use it to reduce the National Insurance  rate by 2%! What this means is that, going forward, the government has £9 billion less annually to spend on the NHS and, as a result probably, waiting times will get longer! Just a thought.

    1. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9366/CBP-9366.pdf
    2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023  acc. 23:32, 12.4.24