ARE you just so worried about the state of the NHS you’re considering the unthinkable, like privatising it? Here’s how to show it:
Draw attention to all its failings
Waiting lists are terrible, aren’t they? Higher than ever. And patients are being treated in corridors, and in ambulances, and those poor nurses are so overworked and underpaid. Never mention solutions. Just list what’s wrong with an expression of deep sympathy.
Act like it’s a natural disaster
It’s nobody’s fault when you get ill. Similarly, it’s nobody’s fault that the NHS is in the terrible state it’s in. Only vicious ideologues would apportion blame. No, like an earthquake or a tsumani, the absolute wreckage of our healthcare system is just one of those unfortunate things. So much suffering. Such a shame.
Mention its size and cost
Did you know the NHS is the biggest single employer in Europe and one of the largest in the world? That it employs 1.3 million people? That it accounts for 44 per cent of all budgeted government spending? Just leaving those facts there. Up to you if you want to do anything with them.
Casually compare it to other countries
Did you know South Korea is widely thought to have the best heathcare system in the world? Or that Austria’s healthcare is the envy of Europe? Or that US healthcare develops cutting-edge treatments used the world over? No reference to patients paying for it privately is made. It just hangs in the air, unspoken.
Drop in that reform is necessary
Such an innocent word, ‘reform’. Means nothing and therefore everything. And, given the litany of criticisms above, who could deny that the NHS needs it? Who could blame a prime minister whose father was a doctor and whose mother was a pharmacist for commissioning a report carefully including all the right lobbyists?
Never let on this has been a right-wing obsession for 50 years
Plans going back all the way to the 1970s to privatise the NHS? A long-held ambition of every Tory bastard and their donors? Certainly not. Anyway, shut up and let us have this one you selfish malingerers. It’s all we’ve got since Liz Truss f**ked up our no-tax dreams.
