Tuesday, April 07, 2009

"Right wing" blogger defends Daniels Hannan! Shock! Horror!

This is a taste of things to come from Labour's attack dogs over the next few months as they despairingly try to prevent a meltdown at the June elections. In this example, dear old John Prescott is desperate to reclaim the NHS as the Labour Party's own particular fiefdom in the minds of the electorate even after David Cameron has explicitly said that a Conservative government would protect spending on it.



Labour supporters are ever so keen to cite the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan's recent interview with Fox News as evidence that the Conservative Party is concealing it's real intentions for the future of the NHS. But watch and listen to what he actually said (about 6 minutes into the video below).



I am a great supporter of the NHS - I worked in it for 17 years - and have had many personal experiences of how brilliant it can be. But if I was advising the US government on how to reform their health care system I could not urge them to follow our model. Particularly, they should not try to impose the sort of target driven culture that has led to the sort of scandals that result in the needless deaths of tens of thousands of patients from hospital-acquired infections or patients being shunted into holding wards so they don't breach the 4-hour wait limit in A&E.

If Labour wants to make the NHS a battleground for the next general election they will have to have a lot of sound arguments to show that they are more competent than their record over the last 12 years justifies.

2 comments:

Oldrightie said...

Desperate lefties are one of the most unpleasant and dangerous species on the planet!

Robert said...

So of course the question begged is what would you have, America has a two tier health service we are told, well actually it has a three tier health care paid for out of insurance, those that can pay for private treatment get the best, those that can pay insurance premiums get a second best, once you have claimed for say Cancer your normally refused treatment, then of course you have the last the bottom who do not have any treatment.

The NHS might be poor at looking after us but of course people will die of cancer because they smoke eat to much or what ever, but on the whole the NHS has made people live longer.

Yes of course the NHS could be better, and putting more money into it is not always the answer, perhaps allowing the rich to pay for better health care would be one way to go, then again nothing stops the rich from doing this anyway. But Unum Provident is a good answer to those that say insurance is the best way forward, they have been fined hundreds of millions for refusing treatment to people, they are here now in the UK trying to get us to change.

I'll stick with the NHS until somebody can tell me which way would the poorest get treatment