I was born three years and two months before the National Health Service was launched, in July 1948.
I have no actual memory of the Lake Hospital in Ashton under Lyne, but I know that my mother was kept in for at least two weeks and we were discharged as both fit and well.
For the rest of my life I have where possible avoided the NHS and only visited the Doctor when self medication had failed (self medication mainly involving Aspirin and Whisky, the Aspirin dulls the pain and the Whisky makes you feel better).
Having said that I have been hospitalised twice.
Once having fallen down the stairs and broken my ribs I was admitted with/for? a Pneumo Thorax, I asked the consultant if it was the condition or the treatment, but he gave me a strange not to say withering look and didn't deign to answer, but that could have been because the day before I had reminded him of the Bob Monkhouse joke about 80% of accidents happening at home, the punchline, where do the homeless have their accidents? equally failed to amuse the consultant or any of my visitors.
The second time I was admitted was after a nose bleed, it involved a dramatic transfer from Berwick to Newcastle, a Blue Light ride and admission to hospital. After I complained and asked to leave I was rapidly re - labelled and went from that poor man who had suffered a major Epistaxis to that awful man, covered in blood, who obviously got what he deserved. Implication, he shouldn't pick fights in pubs!
The rest of my contacts with the NHS have been minor matters, and usually ended with the doctor telling me all his troubles (it's good advice to never mention back pain I find).
But what from this vast experience can I say about the current proposals.
Well when you are lying at the bottom of the stairs hoping that you can find a comfortable spot where the pain will ease up enough to allow you to think, the notion that the actuarial calculation as to the most cost effective treatment be it private or public, doesn't immediately engage you. Stop the pain please, is the best you can manage.
When I took my daughter to hospital in America, she having been bitten by a squirrel, the first question I was asked was whether I had insurance or a Credit Card, only once the money had been sorted was she admitted for treatment, into ER, the next guy who was admitted was handcuffed to a bed and escorted by two armed policemen.
Disappointingly George Clooney was nowhere to be seen, ER it most definitely was not.
I have two questions about what is happening, the first what was wrong with the policy being pursued by the last Labour Government and initiated by Tony Blair, answer nothing but it would have meant that the Con Dems could not have scored any party political points.
The second point is, whilst the country is in the Black, how can the NHS be described as 'facing bankruptcy'? at the end of the piece it is the flagship public service and it has to be paid for if the population at large is to be maintained as healthy and fit.
Although of course, far more important than treatment is prevention, about which largely, we are very poor for which of course obesity and all the attendant problems associated with obesity are testament.
The recent example of money being siphoned out of elder care shows clearly what happens when a public service is privatised, then bankrupt might be the right word, but is it morally right to expose the health of the nation and care of our most vulnerable to the vagaries of the profit motive?
The Lake Hospital got its name from Chadwick Dams nearby, it is now Tameside Hospital and it claims that dignity, respect, trust and partnership are the themes that underpin its mission and values.
I'm not sure how things were in 1945 but I am sure that my mother trusted the hospital and the staff, and that she was afforded a degree of dignity and respect although I doubt if there was much partnership involved.
But in those grey post war years people looked forward with hope as they yearned for a better life and greater opportunity the Con Dems are taking us back, maybe not to the fifties or before, but as living costs spiral and wages fall, as pensions lose their value and the great public services are privatised we can only hope that the baby of the welfare state, that cared for people from the cradle to the grave, is not simply thrown out with the bathwater of the financial crisis by the millionaire policy makers of 2011.
I have no actual memory of the Lake Hospital in Ashton under Lyne, but I know that my mother was kept in for at least two weeks and we were discharged as both fit and well.
For the rest of my life I have where possible avoided the NHS and only visited the Doctor when self medication had failed (self medication mainly involving Aspirin and Whisky, the Aspirin dulls the pain and the Whisky makes you feel better).
Having said that I have been hospitalised twice.
Once having fallen down the stairs and broken my ribs I was admitted with/for? a Pneumo Thorax, I asked the consultant if it was the condition or the treatment, but he gave me a strange not to say withering look and didn't deign to answer, but that could have been because the day before I had reminded him of the Bob Monkhouse joke about 80% of accidents happening at home, the punchline, where do the homeless have their accidents? equally failed to amuse the consultant or any of my visitors.
The second time I was admitted was after a nose bleed, it involved a dramatic transfer from Berwick to Newcastle, a Blue Light ride and admission to hospital. After I complained and asked to leave I was rapidly re - labelled and went from that poor man who had suffered a major Epistaxis to that awful man, covered in blood, who obviously got what he deserved. Implication, he shouldn't pick fights in pubs!
The rest of my contacts with the NHS have been minor matters, and usually ended with the doctor telling me all his troubles (it's good advice to never mention back pain I find).
But what from this vast experience can I say about the current proposals.
Well when you are lying at the bottom of the stairs hoping that you can find a comfortable spot where the pain will ease up enough to allow you to think, the notion that the actuarial calculation as to the most cost effective treatment be it private or public, doesn't immediately engage you. Stop the pain please, is the best you can manage.
When I took my daughter to hospital in America, she having been bitten by a squirrel, the first question I was asked was whether I had insurance or a Credit Card, only once the money had been sorted was she admitted for treatment, into ER, the next guy who was admitted was handcuffed to a bed and escorted by two armed policemen.
Disappointingly George Clooney was nowhere to be seen, ER it most definitely was not.
I have two questions about what is happening, the first what was wrong with the policy being pursued by the last Labour Government and initiated by Tony Blair, answer nothing but it would have meant that the Con Dems could not have scored any party political points.
The second point is, whilst the country is in the Black, how can the NHS be described as 'facing bankruptcy'? at the end of the piece it is the flagship public service and it has to be paid for if the population at large is to be maintained as healthy and fit.
Although of course, far more important than treatment is prevention, about which largely, we are very poor for which of course obesity and all the attendant problems associated with obesity are testament.
The recent example of money being siphoned out of elder care shows clearly what happens when a public service is privatised, then bankrupt might be the right word, but is it morally right to expose the health of the nation and care of our most vulnerable to the vagaries of the profit motive?
The Lake Hospital got its name from Chadwick Dams nearby, it is now Tameside Hospital and it claims that dignity, respect, trust and partnership are the themes that underpin its mission and values.
I'm not sure how things were in 1945 but I am sure that my mother trusted the hospital and the staff, and that she was afforded a degree of dignity and respect although I doubt if there was much partnership involved.
But in those grey post war years people looked forward with hope as they yearned for a better life and greater opportunity the Con Dems are taking us back, maybe not to the fifties or before, but as living costs spiral and wages fall, as pensions lose their value and the great public services are privatised we can only hope that the baby of the welfare state, that cared for people from the cradle to the grave, is not simply thrown out with the bathwater of the financial crisis by the millionaire policy makers of 2011.
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