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National Health Service Underinvestment

Intentionally, chronically underfunding national health services leads to substandard or denied care, harm and worse outcomes for users and further ongoing medical issues requiring yet more care over longer time periods. This consequently increases demands and pressures on the system. This can also lead to reliance on the benefits system (if there is one) because of a loss of mobility, ability, function, employment, employability, savings, housing, relationships and more. Quality of life for those impacted (and their families) reduces dramatically through no fault of their own (despite them funding the service in the first place through taxes).

Additionally, users lose confidence & trust and are discouraged from using the service unless they have no other choice. When they finally do use the service, their medical issues are more advanced and complex and consume more resources to resolve (if possible), preventative care is impossible and again, demands and pressures on the service increase.

More generally, trust in 'the system', government and authority as a whole is reduced. Why would those in charge seemingly harm the very people they are entrusted to represent and serve? Why invest time and energy in good, the environment, politics or activism if the minute you become a burden you are discarded, ignored and possibly face a tortuous and painful end. Where is the quid pro quo? Where is the balance?

Users also eventually find themselves pitted against each other attempting to gain the care they need. Why should your sick child wait 12hrs be treated in a corridor when 72 Year old Doris is lying, comfortably, in a bed that she doesn't need because there's no provision for her ongoing care outside of hospital. Why does Bert who's retired and has a huge pension get a free heart bypass when working 40 year olds are dying of cancer because their post-diagnosis treatment is delayed due to shortages and delays?

The worthiness for care for some users becomes a point of discussion, a conflict, a 'value call'. Generations go to war, those who have spent a lifetime contributing taxes and value are judged to have not contributed enough, to have had it too good, to have unfairly benefited - to not be worthy, to be too old. Do we want to live in a world where your lifespan is determined by whatever is deemed acceptable to those in power, something that is fluid depending on the moment?

Let's not ignore the taxes that these users have paid over their lifetimes. Paying yet more for private care does not help in a great number of cases as emergency cover does not typically exist where a national health service does. Where full spectrum private care does exist, the American model of insurance tied to employment, deductables, out of pocket expenses and so on clearly demonstrates that this is not a viable alternative. Becoming bankrupt because you have cancer or going into serious, long-term debt because someone called an ambulance for you isn't practical or sustainable and limits life in ways both significant and subtle. Being charged $20 for a cough sweet or denied essential and medically necessary care because a company like United Healthcare wants to 'bump it's numbers this quarter' isn't health care, it's extortion.

The medical staff involved in all of this, likely paid far less than they should be, bear the brunt of their patient's and their loved one's ire. Their caring nature is fully exploited. They do not have the time, the numbers or the resources to provide the care they were diligently trained to provide (at great personal cost). Instead they are micromanaged, bullied, coerced, stressed, given impossible, competing priorities and punished when inevitably, mistakes are made. The dead sea affect comes to bear; good staff leave, change careers or move to the better conditions of private care and bad staff stay as they have few options and little desire for change. As time passes few good staff remain and of course, care quality falls yet further.

In the UK, with the national health service (NHS), this is believed by many to be by design, with the intention to privatise the service, reduce government spending and, where politicians are concerned, profit personally once out of office (via consultant and executive directorship positions and concealed financial investments). Those in power, be they politicians, royalty or the significantly rich mostly do not have to rely on the NHS and can certainly afford the kind of healthy lifestyle, support and preventative health care that keeps them away from the emergency room.

In contrast, the loss and suffering experienced by the general population is acutely personal and

Violence, anger and distress to patients and family

Unnecessary trauma, harm, stress & distress and family issues... little appetite to complain or seek redress

Drug issues - NICE

Foreign influence and 'aspirations' - USA and UK

History; post war - giving people a life they feel is worth fighting for

Examples for the NHS;

References