Long Live The NHS

Pick up almost any newspaper in the country at the moment, and all we hear is how terrible the NHS is. Frankly, I'm fucking sick of it because that simply isn't true.

Want to see a truly awful health service? Try the USA or Romania.

The fact of the matter is that for a mere £4ish out of each paycheck, you not only insure yourself against injury, but you also get a pension and unemployment cover. You go out and fucking find me a better deal for that kind of coverage and I'll eat my words. Theres no loopholes, no catches.. you need a hospital.. you just go, need a doctor? Again you just go, no insurance forms, no questions and no stress.

On top of this, I can firmly say in all confidence that people who do criticise the NHS are invariably ignorant foreigners who don't use it but have a selfish hatred for social health systems of any kind, people who can afford expensive private healthcare and idiots who believe everything they read in the paper.

Sure, people will criticise. They don't think their precious £4 should be used to care for strangers, immigrants and fat people. If I ever meet these people, I shall endeavour to set them on fire.

For £4!?! Shit.. go crazy, you can all have an eye exam on me. You are the kind of people who complain when they put the price of a postage stamp up to 31p.. I'd like to see you take it there personally for that much, you fucking idiot.

Then there are people who say thats its rundown and overstretched.. of course its overstretched, free things invariably are, and YOU won't pay more tax to pay the doctors and nurses a better wage, but, rundown? not on your life.

I recently had the pleasure of being at Lancaster Infirmary, the building looks from the outside about 150 years old.. it would.. its victorian. Inside though, I've seen less sophisticated space ships. EVERY bed has a personal TV/Phone/Internet/Radio combination.. EVERY single bed. Had I been able, I could have blogged from there, while watching digital, high-definition cable TV.

You know something else? The food is better than you could possibly imagine, its fresh and tasty and you actually get a menu full of choices.. not just what they happen to feel like serving. They even do a very good chicken curry.

Invariably, someone will now write to inform me of some terrible experience they had.. of course there is going to be the occasional bad hospital. Thats inevitable.

As long as David "call me Dave" Cameron doesn't start pulling the funding when he and his rich, right wing buddies get into power, then those minority hospitals will be just that.. a minority.

You may say that this system is open to abuse, thats true. Yet, you'll be the first to complain when its not there. You can't tar the majority with the same brush just to make life harder for the terminally lazy and useless. You may say that you have read a bad story, or have known someone who had a bad experience, and that this qualifies you to pass judgement on the system and say that private is better. This is so stupid, its like saying that you can be a fighter pilot because you're good at monopoly.

The system even stretches to the army, did you know that the UK is the ONLY armed force in the world that has a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, with a fully operational operating theatre onboard. Its essentially a mobile hospital and has saved so many lives that I'm left wondering why the other three big defence spenders [America, France & Russia] haven't found room in their VAST military budgest for a similar thing.

I'm not some bleeding heart, wishy-washy liberal. I know its a cruel world with no room for idealism and that people are utter, utter bastards. I just think we can take the best of the left and the best of the right and come up with a far better system than anyone right now is pitching. Republican or Democrat.. Labour or Conservative. You've become so bothered about proving the other one is utterly wrong that you've forgot that there is as much truth in their view as there is in yours.. and between us we could come up with some fantastic compromises.

Think on.