According to Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs, the exhortation to “protect the NHS” during the Covid emergency was not a one-off. The inversion of reality – whereby we must serve the NHS, instead of the NHS serving us – is a feature of the system, not a bug. Here’s how her piece begins.
It’s not even winter and already health chiefs are planning to beg the public to stay away from A&Es to relieve pressure on hospitals. Patients’ lives are being put at risk as they are urged to call NHS 111 instead – and kept on hold for 20 times longer than is standard.
This is all ominously reminiscent of lockdown. As it turns out, even back then the NHS never came close to being overwhelmed. Yet people dutifully stayed at home to save it from collapse – with many not seeking medical attention for non-Covid illnesses like cancer. The public is still paying the price, some with their lives, due to the resulting backlog.
One might have hoped that this would be a tragic one-off. After all, the NHS took the extreme measures that it did in the face of a mysterious new virus. But the way things are going, seasonal shut-downs of varying degrees could become the new normal – with public campaigns that urge people to stay away from hospitals, patients permanently unable to see GPs in person, and cancelled operations stretching endlessly into the future.
Even though the Government has committed billions of pounds in extra funding, the health service remains barely able to function. It is stuck in a vicious cycle, whereby it must routinely insure itself against a worst-case-scenario collapse by driving patients away. This, of course, only leads to more late-diagnosed cancer patients and more delays in routine treatments and operations, making the backlog even worse. Although the chances of an NHS “Black Wednesday” remain remote, in this era of close managerial surveillance and media scrutiny, such a prospect haunts its senior ranks.
Such a devastating doom loop has been a long time coming. The NHS has over the years devised countless strategies for keeping non-urgent patients out of hospital – from experimenting with “virtual wards” to half-baked schemes to revive family doctors. Appeals for patients to avoid A&E are nothing new, either, even if in previous years these were less frequent and more local. The bottom line is that, for years, the NHS’s primary strategy has been to reduce the burden that patients put on it, rather than to improve its capacity to treat them.
There is a structural reason for this. Our health service is idolised as open and equitable, free at the point of use to anyone in need. But in fact, it operates as a “closed” bureaucratic system. Like all such systems, it is absorbed with its own survival, which it seeks to achieve by minimising patient interactions. It avoids direct engagement with outside reality, instead conceiving the latter in a way that suits its own agenda – in this instance, re-imagining patients as its loyal servants, rather than as patients.
Such survival tactics are a necessary feature of all living systems (known in biology as autopoiesis, or self-creation). They are discernible in virtually all large bureaucracies and corporations, as observed by the systems theorist Niklas Luhmann. But the consequences in healthcare are alarming. Even though it is staffed with many dedicated and altruistic people, the NHS operates as a selfish organism. Its primary aims are to survive and self-replicate (particularly within its managerial ranks) – not to meet the needs of the public.
Worth reading in full.
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It is a feature of pretty much every bureaucracy that it cares more about itself than the people it is supposed to serve.
The NHS stands out only because it is one of the biggest bureaucracies in the world and so its failings are bigger.
Channel migrant situation being one example: bureaucracy has unfolded itself to take over and ‘manage’, or give a veneer of management, its main goal however being its own existence.
Bureaucracies need raw material just like manufacturers do, and are neutral on what that is and what product they output.
Indeed. The WHO and SAGE are in the pandemic business, hence why they were/are happy for the “pandemic” to continue forever – I never really got why that wasn’t obvious to people.
The reason that lockdowns were protected and perpetuated is about control. Non Medical Interventions (Lockdowns) were an unnecessary device to control populations and in the UK to protect the NHS’s inability to cope which is obvious long before Covid.
The use of behavioural scientists (4 of them on SAGE) was an outrage and led to the awful propoganda which attempted and partly succeeeded in scaring everyone.
If anyone is even slightly sceptical that the Covid debacle was not driven by big pharma and political taskmasters, try seeking out Dr Mike Yeadon and evertything he has to say. He was the worldwide head of Phizer’s Respiratory Science for 17 years. The man knows it all and he says that Covid was not much greater than normal Winter Flu (death figures now concur that is the case), the vaccines were not fit for purpose biologically (could not stop infection or transmission) and are almost certainly creating the huge excees deaths now being recorded.
That’s a feature of every degenerate hierachical organisation: It is stuffed with people who care more for organizational and general politics than for getting the job done they’re supposed to do. Public services have no monopoly on that.
Eg, for the last couple of days, there was a bus from some private health care organisation in Broad Street. This was supposedly about marketing the services of said company. Obviously, they had rainbow flags all over their stall. I’ve seriously entertained the thought of approaching the people there to tell them that exellent private health care seems pretty unrelated to promotion of certain sexual practices to me and hence, why they’re promoting the latter and not the former. I didn’t do this as the people there wouldn’t have understood it, anyway, and didn’t make the decision to use this particular kind of decoration. Whoever made this decision is a person who shouldn’t be working for this particular company as he/ she obviously believes to have a general political duty that’s more important than the technical job duty while at work.
How about “every bureaucracy”?
Will the health chiefs and their families stay away from the NHS if needed, doubt it, as usual it will be do as I say not as I do. Billions ploughed into it and they still need more managers and admin
Depends what their salary is; they might shell out to use something else instead of relying on the NHS alone. Happens all the time in firms that offer private cover as a benefit.
That’s true, I’ve had to do it myself recently, there are many things in the ‘free’ NHS which we actually have to pay for
NHS chiefs, their families and senior medics will get the best treatment available. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
And if that doesn’t work out they’re all paid so much they can afford private health care.
Healthcare is a scarce commodity so has to be rationed somehow. Admitting this would be a first step to improvement.
I have all but stopped using the NHS, except for a repeat prescription every month. I am losing weight and getting as fit as possible in the hope I can ditch the blood pressure medication (20lbs lost so far). As far as I’m concerned I receive no service from my gp at all. My medication is never reviewed, I am never asked in for a health check (I am late 60s), they just fork out the pills to me and hope I don’t bother them. If I need to see a gp there is a lovely private one in a nearby town. It’s £95, but for that you get half an hour to discuss ones health problems in a professional and friendly manner (rather than disinterest followed by a Google print out). If I need to see a consultant or have elective surgery I will pay for it. I live in fear of either my oh or me becoming suddenly very ill because the NHS will probably finish us off, like my father in law, who went into hospital with a water infection and then died from multiple injuries received on the ward (2 broken hips, a broken upper arm and head injuries. We sued and won).
I don’t hear ANYONE with a good word to say about the NHS anymore.
I’m staying well away from the NHS as I consider it to be bad for my health. I research natural methods instead. Its surprising how many natural ingredients are already in the kitchen cupboard!!
The People’s Health Alliance has a directory of practitioners, I’m using the services of a herbalist to treat sinusitis. Working a treat & no profits to the lying nasty pharma.
She even accepts payment of freshly baked bread for administering the blood test at home
A Cochrane review found the standard treatment for sinusitis (antibiotics) was marginal and had to be weighed against the harm done by antibiotics https://www.cochrane.org/CD006089/ARI_antibiotics-sinus-infection-short-duration-adults
I know. I’m being treated by a herbalist not the NHS & not an antibiotic in sight.
But thank you for the link.
I used to get sinusitis regularly about twice a year, but no longer; the way I deal with it is prophylactic, treating upper respiratory tract infections, mainly by sucking zinc tablets, so that they don’t get a chance to develop into sinusitis.
This is as a result of a detox brought about by tapering off completely anti-depressants & Gabapentin. A side effect worth the price. Just got to clear the crap out…
Always painful getting from a bad place to a better one
Well done for winning, but sorry that it was the consequence of losing your father in law. How on earth did the hospital explain away all those fractures, other than losing his records no doubt??
Want to lose weight? Go Carnivore and dump ALL carbs. Whilst I was not overweight, 14 stone for years, 6’6″ and big boned, going Carnivore saw me lose 20lbs in less than two months without even trying. Better, the wright lost was all visceral fat (think “fatty” liver”) which you do not want and is the direct result of government and NHS dietary – which has in turn produced MASS obesity and diabetes or pre-diabetes in millions). I’m 71 and have muscle tone of a 30 year old.
Go on. What have you to lose (bar loads of visceral fat!)
Let’s face it there is no health service anymore, instead we have a pretence of one. Similar democracy and a British government (LOL), and as for an independent press – I have a bridge to sell you!
If it’s London Bridge then I’m interested!!
I don’t even think about there being a health service anymore. I’ve bought high quality dental tools, I’ve managed to train my eyes to use monitors and read books without any glasses (or at least get by with the pair of I was prescribed four years ago). I haven’t contacted a GP surgery since January 2020 except to get my regular Omeprazole prescription renewed (if necessary, I can buy it). That was done via the SystmOnline app.
I’m paying £120 (ouch!) to send my 85 year old Dad to a private GP today, because the NHS GP he saw a couple of weeks ago gave him two drugs that aren’t supposed to be coprescribed and he was violently ill. The (different) GP who saw him the next day treated him and my Mum like old fools and had them out of the surgery in 10 minutes dismissing the dangerous co-prescription. A doctor friend upcountry has since confirmed to me that the GP’s computer would have flagged up an alert and he would have had to override a block on co-prescribing those drugs. The pharmacy should also have warned my Dad about those drugs.
The NHS is the National Death Service now: it’s an incompetent bureaucracy that needs abolition. We need to create a new health system, not reform the current one. The system is de facto getting privatised anyway: I’m paying for my Dad to see a private GP, because the NHS is rubbish and doesn’t want to see anyone, equity firms are buying up all the surgeries in my city, my opticians run an insurance scheme even for NHS patients, there are no NHS slots available at any dentists, so you have to go private, paying another insurance fee. We’re getting all the worst aspects of privatisation, but none of the benefits (comprehensive GP, dentist, optician, emergency cover, for example) while having the money that funds the NHS taken by coercion.
National Insurance is a massive con trick: if a private business ran it, they’d be done for fraud. Basically, my National Insurance should go into an account, be invested and gain interest. I should be able to go online – as with my bank account – check my balance and control how the money is used. Instead, my money is taken from my earnings and used to pay my parents’ generation’s pensions (theirs was stolen to pay their parents’ pensions and hospital treatment) and to pay for fat, chain-smoking alcoholics in the next postcode to get treatment.
The Post War Bulge generation was the first to pay into NI for their entire working lives, yet they’re told there’s not enough money. Who in the state misappropriated and misused all that money and continues to do so? Civil Servants need to be made directly, individually liable for decisions and subject to court proceedings.
Some sort of new state/private health combo is needed. The state gets you to hospital in an ambulance and keeps you alive. What happens next is down to your insurance and doctor talking to each other. All the obese people need to be put on higher premiums than people who make an effort to stay in shape and eat properly. Offer fatsos subsidised gym memberships on the proviso that, if they reach certain weight targets, their premiums will be reduced. It’s interesting that trade unions are willing to negotiate with privatised power firms for cut price power deals for their members, but not for private healthcare. Such is the stupid religion of ‘Our NHS’!
COVID-19 showed we have a world-beaten failure of a health system, the ‘embarrassment of the world’ – a system so incompetent that their only option to continue running is to turn away patients. On the current trajectory, within a few years, the NHS won’t see any patients at all and will just have a million managers pushing paper.
In the meantime, according to the latest ONS weekly report, in week 32 death inflation was 10.1% using the 5 year average.
One of a series of excellent articles in today’s edition, especially re Australia.