We need to face facts –NHS is far from perfect (From Halesowen News)

We need to face facts –NHS is far from perfect

3:00pm Friday 4th May 2012 in Letters

FLATTERED as I am that hethinksanythingIcould say could provoke a national crisis, it’s telling that P Morris fails to answer my question (Letters, April 4).

That is: Why has no other developed country followed Britain in creating a huge, monopolistic, state-controlled health service that often only functions at all because of the professionalism of the people who work in it? For example, in France, Germany and Canada, health care is delivered by a mixture of public and private provision, some of it paid for out of taxation, some out of social insurance schemes.

What’s more, their hospitals actually perform better than our own on a whole range of measures.

So how much longer shall we suffer this scaremongering that refuses to countenance that the NHS is far from perfect?

Or is it not time to agree that “if there’s spare capacity in a (private) hospital – and I canbuyitupandhavesomeone treated more effectively – am I going to say because of some bizarre, outdated, ideological reason that is a bad thing?

You’ve got to be joking!”

Cllr Ray Burston Halesowen Area Committee