So now the question has shifted, the blame put elsewhere, triggered by Laura Kuensberg asking Rishi Sunak if he saw a private doctor. He dithered. She asked again. He obfuscated. She repeated. He talked about Ukraine. She said the question in a slightly different way, he answered with all the directness of a taxi-driver trying to hike up a fair. The Labour Party instantly leapt upon poor little Rishi in a very obvious, narrow-minded, Labour Party way.

Private medicine is ‘THE PROBLEM’. Using such a thing is blasphemy in the court of the god that is the NHS. If you use private medical care you whisper it and should be ashamed because you’re taking doctors away from The NHS!

Which is all bollocks because what you’re actually doing is not taking a place in an NHS queue. Leaving it for someone else. Consultants don’t work 97-hour weeks. Not for the NHS anyway.

So they split their work. They do their required sessions for the NHS, for which they earn about 100k a year. And then they do private work. And they do that… for MONEY!!! To supplement their NHS salary.

SUPPLEMENT!!!! Cry the likes of Wes Streeting, THEY’RE ALREADY EARNING 4 TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE!!!!!!

But here’s the thing. To become a consultant takes years. At least 10. Years of exceptionally hard work and study, exceedingly low wages and masses of stress. If there was no way to supplement their ‘decent’ consultant wage by engaging in lucrative private work; why the fuck would they bother becoming doctors? When a lawyer can earn a million quid a year? Ok, there’s the ‘call’, the ‘vocation’, the ‘need to help others’, but you can even justify accountancy on those terms. Loosely speaking, obviously.

If we only had the NHS and private medicine was banned, other than the fact that it would simply collapse like a black hole, doctors would have to be paid significantly more otherwise no-one would ever choose to become one when they could instead turn their intellect to banking and live the high life. Then who would do the medical research?

We are blessed to have a 2-tier health system. I get that its unfair for those who can’t afford BUPA, but for those who can, like Rishi, using it can only benefit the NHS. And when it eventually and finally does get re-built, it will undoubtedly use outside ‘resources’ to share the load. Otherwise it will be in an ever-growing crisis until the day it just stops altogether.

Unfortunately THE NHS has been elevated to such a god-like status that any talk of change or alternatives is immediately met with outcry and declarations of war. By Wes Streeting. And Laura Kuensberg.

Happy fucking raining Saturday

A xxxx