The future of the NHS
Rupert Wood
Whilst watching the Olympic opening ceremony last year, which was in effect a very rare opportunity to broadcast a three hour advert for Britain, that we could be sure that the world would watch, I was struck by the exposure that it gave to the NHS. When given an opportunity to show the world a few things that we are proud of about our nation, we make a point of flaunting the NHS, shows one thing for sure; the British people are very proud of the health system that we have. This fact is further highlighted by the way that, despite a free national health service available to all at the point of need is a relatively left wing policy, during the most recent general election campaign, David Cameron, who stands towards the right of the British political spectrum, branded his party ÂThe party of the NHSÊ and this political stance helped reach Number Ten. As a relatively free market economist, I am often sceptical of aspects of the NHS, and believe its intrinsic flaws make it far from the national asset that we think it is. Firstly, the NHS leads society into a situation in which the health of the individual becomes the stateÊs problem. The NHS is obliged to treat patients whatever oneÊs health problem, irrespective of the behaviour and lifestyle from which the condition arose. Their Âraison dÊêtreÊ is to do whatever they can and spend whatever they need to (within reason) in order to help the patient. Therefore huge amounts of money go on treating conditions that would not have arisen had people not carried on with their unhealthy or injury prone lifestyles. In fact it is estimated that half of NHS spending goes on treating the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles 1 . I therefore believe that if we had a system in which people had
to pay to some degree for the care that they needed, then peopleÊs behaviour would certainly change. For example, the NHS currently provides weight-loss surgery procedures such as gastric bands. This is the cure for a condition that is almost always the fault of the individual, needed as a result of over eating and lack of exercise. These procedures are very expensive, costing about £5,000 in private hospitals 2 . Therefore the state provides operations that could have been avoided by not adopting unhealthy habits in the first place. Many would argue that the state providing the safety net for anyone who Âlets themselves goÊ makes the public less afraid of falling into the jaws of obesity. It could therefore be argued that if people had to fund their surgery of this kind out of their own pockets, then they would have more of a disincentive to allow their physical conditions to deteriorate as a result of overindulgence.
2 http://www.surgicare.co.uk/weight-loss- surgery/gastric- band/?ad=P&gclid=CP27vpnNrLkCFXLLtAod1xgA3w
1 Podcast:Michael Sandel – The Public Philosopher ‘should we bribe people to be healthy?’
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