With the gory Tories up to their brassnecks in the bloody carnage of destructive healthcare reforms here’s why the NHS is a great British institution we should not let Cameron’s cronies put to sleep.
If people in other countries regard the UK's National Health Service as something of a miracle, that's because it is. It's easy to be blase and critical of something which is familiar to most Britons as fish and chips and the Beatles, but the simple fact is without a free-at-the-point-of-use NHS, adequate healthcare would be the sole preserve of the wealthy.
Former Labour MP and son of a coal miner, Aneurin Bevan, who spearheaded the establishment of the NHS in the 1940s, would no doubt be turning in his grave to see the plans the current crop of multi-millionaire MPs have in mind for the NHS.
Whereas your average person equates the NHS with healthcare and rightly praise it as one of our country's greatest achievements, a large majority of movers and shakers in the corridors of power equate it with pound signs and that dreaded word - 'commodity'.
Bevan once wrote, "The collective principle asserts that... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means."
Defenders of healthcare reforms hide behind throwaway phrases such as “modernisation of services”, a “cost effective service,” and plead like two-bit touts that as a country we can no longer afford the NHS, but in reality the bottom line is a purely philanthropic enterprise such as the NHS, is impacting on the money men's profit margins. Consequently it keeps them awake at night as they ponder on how they could turn things around without any real resistance and turn a profit out of other people's misery and ill health.
It may all sound a tad cynical but Bevan hit the nail on the head decades ago when he said, "The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society."
Now just look at the damage Cameron, Osborne, and Smith have wreaked upon the Welfare State and imagine what sort of plans these lame ducks are busy hatching for the future of the NHS. It's not looking pretty is it?
We the people fund the NHS but the government are telling us there's not enough money in the pot. Anyone else smell a tangible odour of bull dung? Billions of pounds of taxes remain uncollected and unpaid, while even more is kept offshore by the fat cats of commerce. Instead of collecting these taxes, the government chooses to adopt the stance of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko and snarl pompously, "Greed is good! Let's turn the NHS into a big player in the world of business."
High on a hill above his native town of Tredegar you'll find four standing stones which act as a memorial to Aneurin Bevan, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer and fast food addict, George Osborne, will be lucky if his lasting legacy is a plastic plaque outside his nearest McDonald's.
Now, while there are many horror stories regarding individual patients treatment at the hands of the NHS, it all usually stems from a cut in funding and a lack of services to meet the ever higher demand of people's requirements. Privatisation is not the answer, simply finding the necessary resources is.
The NHS as an idea represents the very best in humanity, that of people working for one another and ensuring everyone is taken care of in the name of the greater good. Privatisation represents the very worst, and in an environment of brutal self-interest and callous commerce who's gong to take care of you when you're ill if you haven't got enough money to pay the devil for his sympathy?
There seems a general apathy towards the destruction of the NHS amongst a lot of the younger generation, perhaps because no-one appreciates how valuable a resource it is until they really need to call upon its services. The key word here being 'need'. We need the NHS, not just for what it offers, but for what it represents, an institution which was built upon the ideals and values which the politicians of today with their sickening naked ambition, and sneering self-interest, woefully fail to comprehend.
