There was a time when I had a black and white view on the NHS in one specific area: the use of private health vultures – sorry, providers – to treat NHS patients. “This,” I probably ranted, “was the thin end of the wedge. It’s privatisation by stealth. Worst of all, IT’S NOT SOCIALISM” which of course is exactly what the NHS is. Socialism in its purest form. Today, in its attempts to repair the NHS after 14 grim years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding, the government has announced it plan to put the NHS back together and that includes the use of private health parasites. Why the change of heart?
I suppose it’s how you define socialism. The hard left, as we all know, regards socialism as purity. There can be no compromise, no halfway house. If millions are suffering on waiting lists – and the Tories were booted out of office, leaving over seven million of us on waiting lists – then how socialist is it to make working class people suffer?
The wealthy, as is their wont, may not concern themselves with the NHS at all. Our former prime minister Rishi Sunak (remember him?) didn’t even use an NHS GP, preferring the privileged private health care his extreme wealth accorded him. This, I once concluded, how capitalism worked. I didn’t approve and, frankly, still don’t approve of it, but here’s the thing. With an NHS that’s been failed by the ruling Conservative party, one might say quite deliberately (and be correct), how socialist is it to condemn working class people to years of pain and distress on waiting lists when a temporary fix is at hand? That’s what today’s announcement is all about.
The idea is to both improve the NHS and while that is taking place over a number of years, perhaps as long as a decade, to deal with the here and now of sick people. So I have, in one way, set aside my principled objections to the use of private healthcare companies set up to make money out of people’s misfortunes, by using their services, still free for the patient at the point of delivery to make all of us better.
Whether this is seen as a betrayal of socialism, I do not know and frankly do not care. What I am more interested in, the new more practical and realistic me, is doing what works. If the followers of Karl Marx are upset by this, then that’s really their problem. Because if I was in the posiLet thetion of having to wait years for an operation on the NHS or weeks via a private provider acting on the instructions of the NHS, I would not choose to live in pain as a matter of principle.
The best way to get rid of private healthcare is to make the NHS so good that no one needs or uses it. I regard that as a serious aim for our country. If we are going to have a national health service, then let’s make it the best it can be. And if that means extra taxes, then so be it.
