Our National Health Service
I walked through the snow to hospital for a blood test yesterday. I do it every year.
Britain is one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world. We’re taxed on our income, taxed on our expenditure, taxed on our savings, taxed locally, taxed nationally, taxed on capital gains, and for some purchases such as petrol and diesel there’s a tax on the tax.
A lot of the money thus raised is frittered away on cleaning moats, pointless wars in Afghanistan, Mr & Mrs Robinson, buying duck palaces, redecorating after elections, Dianne Abbott’s school fees and so on.
But some of it goes into the National Health Service. For those of you in other countries who attack our NHS — listen up, you guys: it works. And we’re not all sad pinko commie bastards for thinking so.
The NHS is perhaps the greatest achievement a Welshman has given the world.
I was born two years before its creation, so I have enjoyed health care paid through taxes almost all my life. I grew up on National Health orange juice, National Health dried milk, NHS this and that. I was reasonably healthy. I was in hospital for six months with polio when I was nine. I had my appendix and my tonsils torn out by an Army surgeon. And that’s about it.
My doctor calls me in for check-ups once or twice a year. It’s no real hardship because she looks like a more attractive version of Audrey Hepburn. She gives me pills for cholesterol, high blood pressure and various allergies. She tells me to lose weight, cut down on my drinking and stop smoking nasty little cigars. She gives me as much Cialis, Lipitor, Felodipine and Zaditen as I want. I haven’t asked her for methadone, but hey. I don’t have to pay a penny for anything. I’m pretty fit.
Of course it’s not perfect. The NHS spent £12 billion on a computerised system that doesn’t work, largely because the people who are left to actually press the keys are too stupid or not sufficiently trained. That is a very large sum of money. The dental service could be a lot better — there’s one aspect where Americans, for example, are streets ahead of us.
But anyone who has had a serious or chronic health problem and has had it dealt with by the NHS has come away praising it to the skies. The service and skill levels are astoundingly good.
I have no desire to put it to a real test at any time.