State of the Health Service

Many health/hospital trusts are trying to solve their ‘overspend’ problems by sacking staff. Unless the staff that are going are consultants or managers (which I doubt) the pitiful NHS wages saved will be a mere splash in the ocean. Here is my answer to the NHS funding problem.

• Sack all the managers whose job it is to oversee spending. Once you have someone in charge of finances, to the exclusion of other considerations that is when we see financial problems start. And it should save a considerable sum.


• Re-introduce matrons. They ensure that wards are run effectively and efficiently from a clinical point of view. The knock-on effect of this will be to see efficient use of resources, and a consequential reduction in spending.


• Raise the top rate of tax to 80% and use the extra money to fund the NHS.


• Stop using money to kill people (Iran) and use it in hospitals. It seems the NHS doesn’t have a bottomless pit of money, yet the engineered conflict in Iran does.

I doubt these simple solutions will be adopted. This would ruin the conservative plot, continued by Tony Blair to privatise the health service by the back door.