Good Money After Bad

The Tories are going to outspend Labour on the NHS. That's right. The Tories. Outspending Labour. On the NHS.

No doubt there will be those who praise Cameron's vision, and mark this as a turning point in the electoral fortunes of the Tories. Just as Nu Labour appeared to show they were committed to economic stability* by matching Tory spending plans in 1997, so Cameron's Tories are showing themselves to be committed to the public services by throwing money at the NHS.

Just a shame that it is a bullshit policy then, isn't it?

This comment in the Telegraph article is eye-opening:

"Since 2002, Gordon Brown has pumped huge amounts of money into the National Health Service, increasing spending by more than £40 billion in all. Yet critics including many Tories say the increases in spending have not been matched by improvements in care."

Quite. The "many Tories" are right. Nu Labour has poured a fortune into the NHS, and have got no return on investment. The NHS was shafted when they came to power. A decade and billions of pounds later, and it is still shafted. If the Tories are elected, then they could spend a decade and even more billions of pounds, and the NHS would still be shafted. The problem is not the amount of money spent on the health service. It is more the nature of the health service itself.

The NHS is an embarrassing anachronism. It was created to deal with British society in the latter half of the 1940's - over sixty years ago. Even before the end of the Attlee years in Downing Street, the "free at the point of service"** NHS was already having to charge (causing splits in the Labour party even back then.) Now, decades after the health service came into being, we have a bloated, out dated monoply trying to come to terms with medical technologies and levels of population growth that seemed impossible in the 1940's. You can throw as much money as you like at the NHS: it will simply swallow it, and ask for more.

A truly radical policy would be to attack the NHS - to question why we need this (man made) institution at all. Why not at least consider a future where the health concerns of this nation are not tied up with the money pit that is the NHS?

But the Tories would never dream of risking that level of controversy, so we will see exactly the same policies towards the NHS as we did under Nu Labour. Which is to the detriment of both health in this country and the efficiency of the state. And ultimately, whatever the Tories say, the latter will lead to the taxpayer shelling out more.

The very defintion of madness is to do exactly the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. The health policies of both Nu Labour and Cameron's Tories are, therefore, the very definition of madness.

*Cue hollow laughter.
**Just remember, the NHS is not free. It is free at the (generally shitty) point of service. That wodge of cash that the government took from your last pay slip, that is paying for your right to die on a makeshift bed in a corridor in a NHS hospital.