DK blogs about the recent fall in the cost of medical insurance and what this might mean for the NHS. I’m surprised by his concern for the poor.
Surely the major reason the NHS is in the state its in (aside from rampant managerialism and consultant-itis thanks to the wonders of our business schools, thank you very much Mrs Thatcher, Lord King and Gordon Gecko) is because Doctors and Nurses spend so much of their time treating poor people. And poor people have bad diets, tend to smoke and drink too much, don’t join proper gyms, and very rarely have ayurvedic treatments. Which means they’re more likely to get ill. It’s their own fault for Kali’s sake.
In fact, without the poor, Doctors would have a lot more time to spend with proper middle class patients who have probably done all their work for them already over the interweb. Patients who might have investments in pharma-combines that would mean both sides of the Doctor-patient relationship would have a vested interest in which drugs are prescribed rather than just the medical end of the arrangement.
If we stopped treating the poor, let them die, then we wouldn’t need the money from fags which is used to support the NHS. Which would be good, because, well, we’d be getting a lot less of it. Then there would be enough resources to go round, and if those of us remaining had a cocaine overdose or two, well, we could afford the treatment and we’d probably only been borrowing the local GP’s supply anyway.
Actually, thinking about it, given its only the poor who go to NHS hospitals these days, perhaps its why the medical profession created MRSA. This is their hidden agenda. Well done Patricia Hewitt, it IS the beat year for the NHS after all. AT least since that nice Dr Shipman retired. Soylent Green anyone?