The Chancellor or the Exchequer Rachel Reeves in her annual Spending Review has decided to throw some more gold leaf on the already heavily gilded Golden Calf that is the NHS. There may be many people out there who will welcome this extra spending even though they know in their heart of hearts that this extra money is going to be squeezed out of them via direct and indirect taxation, money ‘reallocated’ from other Government departments or worse money borrowed from other governments and non-governmental sources.
Those who welcome the extra funding from the NHS might be under the impression that this additional money might improve NHS services. People might think that at last I’ll get a GP appointment in a reasonable time, that medical tests will be done swiftly, that the hospitals will cease to be filthy, frightening places run by staff who mostly can’t give a toss.
The trouble is that this is unlikely to happen. I doubt that much of this money will end up in the hands of front line staff in order to improve patient care. I predict that a whole lot of this extra money will be spunked up against the wall on DEI nonsense, interpreters for foreign invaders, compensation to those who have been medically damaged or killed by poor NHS treatment, more management bloat and will do nothing to make the current dire NHS any less dire.
A government could put the entirety of the UK’s GDP into the NHS and it would still be crap. This is because it’s not a case that the NHS is starved of money, it’s that the current NHS model has failed.
The NHS either needs radical reform or replacement as it’s not functioning as a proper healthcare system for many Britons. I agree that some people have good experiences of the NHS but a lot of people do not.
Those who are hoping that the extra money for the NHS will improve things are fools. The NHS will take this extra money and waste it either deliberately for ideological reasons or out of sheer catastrophic incompetence. This extra money will likely do nothing for patient care but it might give some worthless make-work manager a nicer office.