NHS DEBACLE.

Listening to another bunch of politicians telling me that the NHS is their number one priority or is safe in their hands makes me want to commit hara-kiri. Cameron and his cronies have no more idea about sorting out the NHS than have any other politicians since 1970. The problem is that there is no simple solution and this seems to be the conclusion that's been forced on the Government as it's announced a 'pause' in the passage of the latest reform package.

Doctors will always want to do the best for their own specialty, and the ones who shout loudest, and have the most appealing causes, are the ones who get the money. This is why we've failed to invest in areas such as care of the elderly and terminal care, male cancers and arthritis, while pouring resources into the nebulous fields of psychiatry and psychology, female cancers, and anything that vaguely appeals to a younger age group. Money has followed the outcries because that's how politicians get re-elected.

Whatever these idiots say, we all know that politicians have only a political interest in the NHS; they don't have any real understanding of how it works or what is does. Many of our political leaders are in the happy position of being able to switch to private healthcare whenever they like or, at the very least, are comfortable in the knowledge that their high public profile will ensure they are never at the end of a queue or treated poorly. They have no idea about what happens to the ordinary man-in-the-street. The likes of the current Health Secreatray, Andrew Lansley, and a previous one whom I met, Stephen Dorrell, have as much understanding of the NHS as I do of 15th century art - zilch.

Having worked in the NHS for many years, at a very senior level for a good few of them, I know more about the ins-and-outs than the likes of Cameron and his acolytes will ever know. It is frighteneing and not a little shocking to hear some of the utter rubbish that is talked by these totally uninformed people. The idea that GPs should be handed the vast bulk of the budget to manage is laughable and terrifying; inevitably, much money will be wasted on pet schemes, experimental therapies and employing their consultant friends, not because they want to waste it, but because they are not expert in the art of managing scarce, and diminishing, resources.

Doctors are good at what they do; they are not accountants, they are not general managers. In terms of the NHS, they know about their own field of expertise - doctoring; they do not know about general or financial management on the scale of hospitals, some with budgets of hundreds of millions of pounds. Of course, they can always employ experts to advise them, but then we're back to where we started, having thrown the whole pack of cards in the air and created an enormous mess to get there. 

This may be unfair on some doctors but, as a generality, it is true. Some GPs may well want the 'buzz' of having a huge budget to play with - god help us if they ever get the chance. From my own experiences at the time of 'GP Fundholding' in the early 1990s, I know very well that some GPs are far from averse to using such a power to line their own pockets and those of their hospitial consultant friends, rather than actually worrying too much about their patients. There were cases in which the power of money went to their heads and they were all too willing to virtually hold hospitals to ransom. We do not want, and cannot afford, any repetition of these scenarios.

Sadly, what politicians love is to make a name and 'do something'; far too often they feel an irresistible urge to 'do something', when doing nothing would be far better. It's as if 'doing something' was their very lifeblood. Ever since its foundation in 1948, the NHS has been used as a political football; it's been re-organized more times than I've changed my socks and all we have to show for this 'action' is a disorganized and demoralized service. Vast sums of money have been wasted on computer systems, management consultants, pricing mechanisms, pay restructuring and so on. What the NHS needs is a period of genuine stability in which it is allowed to use the resources at its command to solve its own problems. By all means, set up a high-powered board, peopled by genuine experts, let them determine a future course and then let them implement it - not over 2 or 5 years, but over 10 or 20 years, WITH AN ABSOLUTE GUARANTEE THAT THERE'LL BE NO POLITICAL INTERFERENCE IN THAT TIME. 

Fat chance of that ever happening, when there's so much apparent political capital to be made out of each and every reorganization.  Time to join BUPA, I think.