The Future of the NHS
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Future of the NHS
Can the UK keep its promise of free healthcare for everyone? NHS spending is higher than ever, yet waiting lists are getting longer and patient satisfaction is falling. The worst of the pandemic may have passed, but weekly Covid admissions remain high and many services are still struggling. While many patients feel delighted with the treatment and care they receive, stories of missed targets, staff shortages and crumbling buildings are common. Whether its waiting for an operation, mental health support, getting a GP appointment or just hoping an ambulance arrives in time, our cherished and beloved NHS is letting many people down, in spite of the heroic efforts of its staff. The people vying to be our next Prime Minister have acknowledged the problems, but are not promising big improvements. Is it time for a new model?
Some believe it’s about funding, and we need to accept that the NHS we want and need will cost us much more. But in a cost of living crisis, are people really prepared to pay higher taxes to improve the NHS, and if not, why do we still expect a Rolls Royce health system? Others think it’s a bottomless pit of demand and it’s time to reduce our expectations. Can we afford the NHS to be anything more than a safety net for the sickest and poorest? Is it right to promise care to everyone, even those who can afford to go private? Or, might the public’s willingness to pay for the NHS evaporate, if it's no longer there for all of us? We may love our NHS, but how much should we expect of it, and how much are we willing to pay? With Tim Knox, Dr Jennifer Dixon, Matthew Lesh and Prof Allyson Pollock.
Producers: Jonathan Hallewell and Peter Everett Presenter: Michael Buerk
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Good evening. It's been the repeated boast of the NHS that it's the envy of the world. |
| 0:10.0 | And while many of us have caused to be grateful to the often exceptional people who work for it, |
| 0:14.5 | the reality scarcely bears that out. |
| 0:17.1 | Measured against up to 19 comparative countries across the treatment outcomes of a wide range of diseases and conditions, the UK mostly does badly. |
| 0:25.9 | In a depressing number of cases, it's the worst. That's despite spending more than 10% of GDP on health, matching the average of those countries with which we're being compared. |
| 0:36.7 | It's increasingly difficult to see a doctor. |
| 0:39.1 | A third of GP practices stopped taking routine appointments in the last year. Patient satisfaction |
| 0:44.5 | has collapsed. More than four million people can't even find an NHS dentist. A&E departments |
| 0:51.0 | are frequently almost overwhelmed. The ambulances are a lottery and every so often a dreadful scandal erupts sometimes despite strenuous efforts to cover it up. |
| 1:00.8 | Yet the NHS is still, as Nigel Lawson only half-joked, the closest thing the British have to a religion. |
| 1:07.1 | If not, beyond criticism, an article of faith, a totemic virtue to be venerated. However badly it performs, however better the outcomes and access of other country's systems, to suggest fundamental change is political suicide. Not even the most right-wing Tory party leadership candidate has dared to mention it. Is the moral case for the NHS so overwhelming we should overlook its faults and invest more in it, |
| 1:34.1 | or are the alternatives that work better, help us live healthier, longer and are fair? |
| 1:41.1 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:42.5 | The panel, Ash Sarkar, a libertarian Marxist and editor at the Navarra Media Group, the historian Tim Stanley, the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser, and Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation. You've a dog in this fight, Matthew. Well, we've all got a dog in the fight, haven't we? Be you've got two, your job as well as your health. Yeah, that's right. |
| 2:01.5 | I think the reasons the NHS is in trouble right now are sadly obvious. The decade of austerity |
| 2:07.2 | left the health service desperately short of capacity and then COVID hit an aging population |
| 2:11.8 | scarred by health inequalities. We can rebuild and we can do so on the basis of the core ethic of the NHS to which the public |
| 2:20.3 | is still deeply attached. |
| 2:21.4 | But we're going to have to be realistic about the investment, the time and yes, the reform |
| 2:26.0 | that that will take. |
| 2:27.0 | Tim Stanley. |
... |
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