Why I hate the NHS

I know that there are people throughout the world are green with envy that the British Public has a National Health Service that is "free". "You mean you don't have to pay when you have to go to hospital?" No. "You don't need medical insurance? And how about co-payments?" No, theoretically we don't need medical insurance and no, no co-payments.

So, here's a bit of history: The NHS, unveiled by Aneurin Bevan in the summer of 1948 was, pretty much, what Labour had promised the Brits in their bid to oust Churchill's Conservative government. And it worked. Everything was absolutely free, until the NHS ran out of money three years later and people had to pay for prescriptions, and half the cost of any dental work and optical aids. As of April 1. this year, the prescription charge is £7.10 in England, compared to Scotland where it is £5 and Wales where it is free... this is the start of the disparity.

My neighbour is a lovely lady. About three years ago she started suffering from terrible, excruciating abdominal pains. Her GP sent her away with the advice that she should take paracetamol, and a week later the pain was so intense that she had to go to hospital. In the Emergency Department they did an x-ray and a colonoscopy which showed nothing. It was not until over a year later that she was finally diagnosed with a rare for of bowel cancer that grows on the outer wall of the bowel. Operating was not possible because the tumour was attached to major blood vessels, and after many months of chemo- and radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden in Fulham, (a specialist cancer hospital) it had gone. Tri-monthly checks for the last year or so have all been clear. Until last week. In the three months since her last appointment, the cancer is back, more aggressive than ever and is approximately three inches in diameter. And the first thing the hospital said to her? "Now we need to send off the paper work to see if your NHS Trust will fund your treatment." That's right... if our local NHS Trust decides that she is too old, (she's nearly 60, I think) or that it is not cost effective (because this is the second time she has had this cancer) or even because that particular trust has spent all of the money it had allocated to the treatment of cancer (because they obviously do not know how to spend money effectively) then she will probably die. This is after she has been paying in to the NHS for the last 43 years. It is emphatically NOT free. In fact, it is compulsory to pay for it, with no guarantee that you will be given medical help when you need it most. Had she paid that money in to a private medical insurance policy instead, there would be no question over her treatment.

My local NHS Trust has been terrible for as long as I can remember. In 1997 my father was admitted after being told he was riddled with incurable cancer. It had started in his kidneys and by the time he was diagnosed it was in his bowel, his lungs and had eaten through some of his ribs. He spent some time at home because he hated the hospital, and yet was refused an oxygen canister to take with him. I was sent away to boarding school so that I didn't have to see him so sick. My brothers, fortunately, were too young to remember. I was not allowed home on the exeats, and instead went to stay with my grandmother. My father just didn't want me to see him looking so sick. I remember how this big, strong man withered away to almost nothing, his arms and legs so thin and frail that he was unable to stand or hold himself up. In hospital he started to develop terrible bedsores which got infected. My mother spent every moment at the hospital, bathing him, turning him over, making sure his bed clothes were clean, ensuring that he took his medication and ate when he was able. All things that the hospital staff should have been doing, but weren't.

In September 1997, when my brother was old enough, he was sent to school with me. My father had developed a huge abscess, the size of about four golf balls, on his back. Whatever it was, meant that his left lung could not inflate, he was unable to lie on his back and he was in terrible pain. Tests were done, and it was discovered that he had contracted MRSA. This surprised no-one - the hospital was filthy, God only knows when the last time was that the floors had been mopped; my mother had to clean dried blood from the bed, left by a previous patient. She's sure she never once saw the medical staff washing their hands. On October 28, 2007, my father died in my mother's arms. It was the MRSA in the end, although had it been up to the cancer he may have only had another month.

My point is this: the NHS may look, to an outsider, a service that is so fantastic and should not be knocked. But I have experienced just how fatally flawed it is, and the damage that a badly run health service can do. Now, people are so desperate that they are paying for medical insurance on top of paying for the NHS - although it provides sub-standard health care, no tax payer can opt out of funding it, yet the Trusts are allowed to pick and choose who they treat.

It makes you proud to be British.