Tax the rich: treat the sick!
ANOTHER winter – another crisis for the National Health Service as it struggles to cope with increased numbers of emergency medical admissions insufficient beds, staff and cash.
Gordon Brown’s attempt to look clever by upholding Tory spending limits on the NHS for the first two years and promising not to increase taxes has come back to haunt New Labour.
To add insult to injury, his 3-year "comprehensive spending review" dressed up a small scale increase in health spending to look far bigger than the actual £3 billion a year increase – hence the claims of a £21 billion handout.
But the net result over Labour’s first five years will be to increase NHS spending by only as much as the Tories had averaged in the previous 18 years.
To make matters worse, this will be the first winter in recent memory in which health authorities and Trusts have been given no extra funding to cope with "winter pressures".
There is no objective reason for a crisis. The winter weather has not been especially severe, and despite desperate efforts by the Chief Medical Officer to spare government blushes by inflating the figures, there is no flu epidemic in England: but it is clear that hospitals lack the resources to deal with increased numbers of emergency admissions.
Thousands of operations have been cancelled as surgical wards fill up with medical cases, and as scarce intensive care unit beds fill up, resulting in long journeys for critically ill patients.
The problem has been compounded by Labour’s failure to reverse other damaging Tory policies, which have closed down tens of thousands of front-line hospital beds, trained too few nurses and doctors,
But of course this has not stopped the Tory press from taking full advantage of the embarrassing crisis in what should be one of Labour’s strong issues, predictably plugging the hoary old demand for more charges and private medicine.
They point to health services in Europe which avoid the British disease of waiting lists by spending a much higher share of national wealth on health care – but which also squander much more money in the bureaucratic administration of insurance-based and partly private systems.
Even people who should know better, such as UNISON’s would-be General Secretary Dave Prentis, have called for a "fundamental review" of the way the NHS is funded.
Cheapest
But the answer is not complicated at all: the tax-funded model of the NHS is still the cheapest and simplest way of delivering a comprehensive health care system.
To plug the gaps in care opened up by 20 years of Tory policies, more money must be put in: and the way to raise this is to tax those who have profited for years from the under-funding of the NHS – the rich and big business.
After years in which governments have effectively taxed the sick to treat the rich, it’s time to turn the tables.
But if Blair and co. won’t learn this lesson they could yet pay a heavy electoral price for their arrogance.