The NHS: why we should debate

The latest figures for inpatients and outpatients waiting times have been published today by the Department of Health:


Inpatient Waiting times
• The number of patients, for whom English commissioners are responsible, waiting over the 26 weeks standard for inpatient admission at the end of July 2009 was 25 (compared to the total of 590,000).

• The number of patients, for whom English commissioners are responsible, waiting over 13 weeks at the end of July 2009 was 43,000, a decrease of 1,900 (4.3%) from June 2009, but a rise of 3,500 (8.9%) from July 2008.

Outpatient Waiting times

• The number of patients, for whom English commissioners are responsible, waiting over the 13 weeks standard for a first outpatient appointment following GP referral at the end of July 2009 was 62 (compared to the total of 1,032,000).

• The number of patients, for whom English commissioners are responsible, waiting over 8 weeks at the end of July 2009 was 62,000, an increase of 8,500 (15.8%) from June 2009, and a rise of 26,900 (76.7%) from July 2008.

For me, it's not so much the increases or decreases and percentages which gets me (although an increase of almost 16% for those waiting for an outpatients appointment is rather hefty) but the actual targets themselves.

And the reason I am raising it is not because I want to berate it or praise it, because I'm not a doctor and I don't know if waiting half a year for an operation is normal in the rest of the developed world. It goes back to the debate Dan Hannan took so much stick for getting involved in. Why can't we have a proper discussion about this without the loony left and badly read hacks starting to hurl 'he wants to privatise the NHS' around with the same hiss as they would call someone a paedophile?

Would privatising the NHS be so bad? Would it mean we had better health cover and shorter waiting times? Or not?

I fear the reason we can't is the same reason we don't discuss a proper overhaul of our benefits system, immigration policy and membership of the EU: because those in power don't want to highlight what a complete and utter fuck up they've made of running the country for the last 70 years, because they don't know that much about it and can't be bothered to find out or even admit to themselves they don't know everything and because the public are considered too ignorant to understand what they're talking about and we'll probably pick the wrong answer.

So we'll stick with the same, for better or worse.