The Health Secretary is ignoring the data

Lansley….confused or mad?

 

The NHS Ombudsperson Ann Abraham having lambasted the care of elderly patients at every level, all of us who can see the plastic beaker with spout holes heading our way will be suitably angry (and scared) today.

But I wonder how many of you also spotted that, within Whitehall’s cuts-dwarfing £8.2bn ‘shortfall’, by far the biggest recipient of extra funds was….the NHS. To be exact, the figure is around £1.2 bn, or as near as damnit 17% of the total. That’s one Pound in seven of shortfall down to a Health Service that was showered with funds during the New Labour years.

The NHS is a veritable black hole –  a fiscal nightmare that has swallowed hundreds of billions of Pounds needlessly…even without Connecting for Health wasting an extra £21bn for zero – precisely zero – benefit. The bigger question facing us, however, is this: are the planned Lansley reforms addressing any of these key issues?

The answer is ‘no’, unless you think – as does Andrew Lansley – that the way to get rid of the money-pit is simply to starve it of funds.

Let me explain this briefly – and no condescension intended there: it needs explaining, because the subject is arcane beyond belief. Under his planned ‘reforms’, Mr Lansley wants to award 85% of the NHS budget to the primary care sector – aka, GPs. Of whom, spookily enough, he was one.

Now research shows that very few old folks turn up exhausted at GP practices, begging to fall upon the mercy of doctors picking up £250,000 a year. They tend to wind up in hospitals by various referrals from retirement homes, social security departments, and unpaid carers otherwise known as relatives. So starving the hospital/A&E services of yet more funds taken up by Jowell-drunks and ASBO punks is only going to exacerbate the situation.

Actually, ‘exacerbate’ doesn’t quite cut it as a verb there: ‘create anarchy’ is probably nearer the mark.

Add to these considerations the rising inflation we have at the moment – alongside escalating fuel costs for hospitals and elderly homes – and Andrew Lansley could well one day wind up in a Court in the Hague to answer charges of mass murder.

Look, no bonkers Leftie me: I’ve been blogging for years (and for England) about the need to have a national health offering in which everyone pays their way – and those who genuinely can’t get the same service, but with a lot of financial help. However – trust me, the answer to an insolvent hospital system is not to give all the money to primary care, while the big-hair staff turfed out of the hospitals beg to be taken on by said primary sector at the same level of salary and benefits.

We really must stop seeing the NHS as an internal market. This is a silly post-Thatcher idea of little or no meaning. What we need is a fair health system we can afford.

Lansley is mad. Following his dictum will lead to Bedlam, minus only the beds.