The NHS

The NHS was conceived toward the end of the Churchill wartime government. It came into being in 1948.
The population of the United Kingdom in 1948 was 49.8 million. The average life expectancy for women was around 70; the average life expectancy for men was around 66.

The population of the United Kingdom now is approximately 68.2 million. The average life expectancy for women is 83; the average life expectancy for men is 79.

If those making the decisions in 1948 had been able to predict this level of growth in population combined with increase in life expectancy, they may have paused for thought before proceeding.

There is something which is very important in the context of the NHS's position within our society that doesn't get discussed.
Namely, that not only is our overall population much larger and growing but the proportion of our population that is elderly is far higher than in 1948 and very importantly, there has been a vast increase in the number of people being kept alive by modern medicine yet who are not very healthy.

Thus, not only is the total number of people using expensive NHS resources much higher than at its inception, but the proportion of the population needing to use expensive NHS resources on a regular or permanent ongoing basis has increased hugely.

So, the original decision to go ahead with the NHS all those years ago, which was always based more on social factors than a robust financial case, is rapidly becoming untenable.

Put simply, it's Pyramid Scheme. 

Not just a reducing proportion of healthy/young paying for the increasing proportion of unhealthy/old but Private sector paying for the increasingly costly Public sector.

It’s surely obvious to anyone with an even vaguely open mind on the subject that the Public sector in general and the NHS in particular is becoming, if it has not already become, unaffordable; unaffordable bearing in mind all the other things that are in the Public sector.
Unimportant things like education & law & order for example.

Even if we think we can get away with it for a few more decades, our children will find it a burden that is simply not sustainable by the time they get to my age, unless significant changes are made.

Let’s remember how money flows in terms of the Public and Private sectors. Put simply, the Private sector generates taxation via corporation tax, worker income tax, and employer & employee National Insurance.
These revenues go to the government. The government uses this money to pay for the Public sector, including the salaries of all those that work in it.

Yes, I know that all of those Public sector workers pay tax, but as the wages they get has come from the Private sector via the Government, any tax they pay is merely returning a proportion of that back.

It's not NEW or EXTRA money in the economy!

The point is that the Public sector does not create wealth, rather it consumes the wealth generated by the Private sector & distributed by the government.

I know that so many people don't want to hear this and don't want to even think about it.

90% of people alive today have known nothing else but the NHS.
They think of it as a ‘Right’.
The whys and wherefores of how it is run, organised and paid for are, to many, irrelevant.
They want it, they will always want it, and the only way in which they want it changed is for yet more money to be put into it so that it does exactly what it does now but faster, with more capacity and, yes, more staff.

The only way that we can stop the Public sector and specifically the NHS consuming more and more to the point of bankrupting the Nation is through innovation.

I strongly recommend Matt Ridley's book How innovation works. 

Innovation, far more often than not, is stifled by State intervention. Scientific innovation generally, but medical innovation in particular, is being slowed massively by bureaucracy and the desire for medicines and products that are 100% safe.
The length of time it takes to get new products to market is enormous.
So enormous, that it often puts companies off bothering to the detriment of many potential beneficiaries.

This is not how we will reduce cost while improving outcomes for all.

We see what can be done with the covid vaccines.
They have been created, essentially, from a standing start, and were ready to give people in around nine months. And the vast majority of people are more than happy to take it, even though they are aware that, simply by definition, they cannot possibly have gone through anything other than short term safety trials.
Indeed the clinical trials for the current vaccines are not officially due to end until well into 2023.

What this proves is that if State bureaucracies stopped the cult of ‘safteyism’ and adopted a light touch approach to innovations in medicine, the improvements we need on both the medical outcome and the cost sides can happen and can happen quite fast.

This does not mean a free for all with no testing & trials done for safety.
It does mean slimming the approval process down, so it doesn’t take 70 months to approve the use of a new pacemaker as it did in Europe recently.

The only way to stop the Public sector and particularly the NHS becoming a financial burden that cannot be overcome for our children and grandchildren is through innovation.

It’s through making it worthwhile for those in science generally and medical science particularly to put a lot of time and effort into new ideas and new concepts many of which will fail. But the ones that don't, can make a significant difference.

In simple terms we have to get out of the way of medical science & technology as much as is reasonably possible because we need them to find ways not just of keeping more and more people alive but keeping them alive and healthy.
The healthy for longer, thus requiring less NHS resources part, is how the NHS remains affordable long term while at the same time allowing more people to live longer in good health. 

It may not affect me too much, but it will certainly affect my children and their children if we don't realise this.