
MIKE TOMLINSON: The health crisis is our crisis
THE latest corruptions of democracy swirling around Westminster should not distract us from the intensifying crises in public services, especially health, none of which look like going away soon. The state of the NHS is so bad that radical alternatives to the free-at-the-point-of-use model are openly debated. The voices of private provision get louder and “solutions” such as rationing through fees are getting serious air time. Former chancellor (for six months), Sajid Javid, has even suggested that Britain should be more like Ireland (26 counties) and introduce charges for seeing a GP and for attending A&E without a GP referral. The trouble with the NHS, he wrote in The Times, was that “the only rationing mechanism is to make people wait”. Apply the market mechanism of charges and – bingo! – the queues at emergency departments and for GP appointments magically disappear. Shows how much he knows about Ireland.