The state of the NHS

I know most CoffeeHousers aren’t particularly enamoured of paywalls, but the Times has given you a persuasive reason (£) to dive behind theirs today. (Or least to borrow a copy of the paper.) It’s the first of three reports by Camilla Cavendish on the NHS, this one concentrating on the Way Things Are Now. It is both a disheartening read and a powerful reminder of how taxpayers’ cash is being funnelled into a system that is dysfunctional in the extreme. Here is one snippet for your displeasure:

“Care in Britain ranges from world-class to shocking. Between 1998 and 2006, 1.6 per cent of bowel cancer sufferers died within a month at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, compared with 15.6 per cent at Queen’s Hospital, Burton upon Trent. The National Lung Cancer audit has just reported a sixfold difference in the proportion of lung cancer patients receiving potentially life-saving surgery in different parts of the country in 2009: 31 per cent at Barts, London, and only 5 per cent of patients at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.