We have to have a talk about the NHS....

In 1948 the Labour Government introduced the National Health Service.

It was a radical development and a marker of the social, political and cultural changes that were improving life for the people of the United Kingdom during the 20th Century.

On this 1948 publicity handout, the Government makes clear that the National Health Service is "not a charity, you are all paying for it" and that it was there to "relieve your money worries in time of illness".

There can be few families in the UK who have not benefitted from this inspirational political project in some way over the past 70 years and as a consequence there can be few people in the UK who don't have a sense of love for it; but as we all know, love can be blind.

In yesterday's City AM newspaper, Sam Collins, the Director of the Age Endeavour Fellowship, wrote a well researched and thoroughly coherent piece on why it is time that we had a grown up chat about the National Health Service.

In it he succinctly details some very concerning truths about the NHS. 

These include such surprising facts as the NHS coming 24th out of 30 in a recent OECD study of Health Systems in the 'high and middle income countries' and even when looking at it from a wider global perspective the NHS still sits in the lower portion of the list. 

The Health Systems of nations such as France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Japan are all ranked way higher than our beloved NHS in the OECD league tables.

The sad fact that we must address is that the NHS is not the envy of the world. It is not the jewel in our, nor  anybody else's, crown. It is in fact, a badly broken, impossibly costly and supremely monolithic bureaucracy. The National Health Service was built for a different time, by a different people, in a different nation.

Britain has changed, medical science has changed and now it is time for us to have that serious and rational chat about how our National Heath Service also needs to change.

What the Labour Government did in 1948 was radical, positive and innovative; it was exactly the right thing to do for the UK in the mid 20th Century. 

What we need to do today is something equally radical, positive and innovative; but we need to do it with our eyes firmly fixed upon the realities of the 21st Century.     

You can read Sam Collins' article here  - Sam Collins - City AM - NHS Reform