24 June, 2013

The NHS 2

Further to my previous post on the NHS, here is a good example of what is wrong.

The Guardian's headline screams 'Doctors vote no confidence in Hunt' (Jeremy Hunt, you will remember, is the Health Secretary. This blog had no confidence in him here.)

When you first read this you think it is awful for the Government. The Doctors, who know things, like how to cure a cold (oh, sorry, no they don't) or what to do about your cancer (send you to a specialist) must surely be right in their judgment.

But no, I'm afraid this is completely irrelevant. Mr Hunt is not answerable to the doctors, nor even to the patients, but to the general public (ie not just people who are ill, but people who might be ill in the future but are nevertheless paying for it all). It is not hard to conceive of a circumstance where the interests of the doctors and the public are at odds with one another (continuation of the NHS in its present form is an obvious example) and so it would serve the interests of the public if Hunt were behaving in such a fashion that the doctors had no confidence in him whatsoever.

Let's drop the politicians from all this and get down to who is doing things, good and bad. There's some good. But plenty of bad.

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