The philosophy of the National Health Service, as stated on its website, is that ‘good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth’. This is why, in theory, Britain’s health service ‘covers everything’. Not this month. Last night, NHS hospitals were made to cancel all non-emergency surgeries until February in order to divert resources to this year’s flu epidemic, which is causing mass overcrowding. As a result, outpatient clinics will be shut down for weeks, and 50,000 appointments have been cut from the schedule.
50,000. Even in today’s world, where statistics are everywhere that number cannot pass by fleetingly. 50,000 patients, often in pain as they wait for a hip replacement, knee surgery, or cataract surgery are being denied treatment because the NHS is ill-equipped to deal with the winter flu. If this is not the definition of system failure, what is?
Thanks to the monopoly status of the NHS, most of those 50,000 will simply have to wait until the system can accommodate them.
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