Sic Soc & the NHS.

I heard a startling fact, that it would pay the NHS to fit insulation and new boilers into the homes of asthma sufferers: £1,000 for house improvements as opposed to £2,000 for the inevitable spell in hospital. It’s equally likely it would save on their mental health budget to provide pay-day loans at realistic interest rates, but they’re not into loans and building work. There is a glaringly obvious conclusion, that all the injustices of our society in one way or another result in physical or mental ill health and this un-health of masses of people ends up in the NHS. Poor housing, work stress and poor wages, poor diets, poor benefits even poor education all lead ultimately to an NHS bed, yet this systemic view of society is not even acknowledged. When NHS costs go through the roof it’s viewed as a problem within the NHS not the growing levels of sickness creation in other aspects of society. Quite simply a sick society will require more hospitals, doctors, beds and nurses. The beginning example beautifully illustrates that money skimped elsewhere is far outweighed by the cost of picking up the pieces. And that’s not even taking into account the misery of all that illness. Unfortunately politicians are responders not creative thinkers, they think after the event rather than before it because there’s a greater fear in an unknown improvement than the known ineffective. So save the NHS at all costs, it’s the final barometer of the governments performance and the only way it can be held to account for its wider social mismanagement.