Health And The EU

Health Services And The NHS

In my last post I related a good experience that friend Steve had here with the French health system and implied that he wouldn't have had as good an experience with the NHS. Friend David in Scotland responded with an equally good experience that his wife Hazel had with the NHS there. I'll recount it in his own words.

“Hazel woke up one morning with a very painful eye. She got an appointment with the GP at about 10am. The GP said she needed to go to the Eye hospital and she would make an appointment. We returned home; at about 12 midday the phone rang and it was the GP to say she had got an immediate appointment so we drove to the Eye hospital . It was difficult to park so I dropped Hazel off saying I'd circle till I found a parking spot and then come in to the hospital to see how she was getting on. I circled a couple of times and then as I passed the entrance still looking for a parking space I saw Hazel coming down the steps having been succesfully treated and feeling fine. We were back home by 2pm . This is the story I always tell to anyone who knocks the NHS and there have been many other occcasions when we have been well looked after and not had to wait very long for treatment.

Maybe first class and speedy treatment happens only in Scotland but I suspect the media love to publish horror stories and these have coloured everyone's views of the NHS in England. There have been a few letters in the “i” (my favourite newspaper) of similar stories of good and rapid treatment even for minor complaints.”

I think David makes a useful corrective comment and have to admit that I never had any cause for complaint at the treatment I received from the NHS when I was in England. However my core point remains. It simply isn't economically viable for any national health service to offer a complete range of treatments for every ailment; indeed, as the average age of the European population increases so it will become decreasingly viable, both for health and ancillary care services. So there has to be some form of limitation, some form of compromise to produce an optimal solution. The question is: how can that comromise best be made? Totally ruling out any factor (as a matter of principle) doesn't make finding a good solution any easier.

Spring Already?

We've had a week of unusually clement weather. Flowers that don't usually appear at this time of year are merrily blooming, I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirt sleeves and Mont Ventoux has no visible snow (from down below) on its summit. I've never before known Mont Ventoux to be bereft of now at this time of year; it doesn't bode well for the winter sports trade at the ski stations. A sign of global warming or a blip? We'll have to wait around 300 years to get a decent perspective on that but don't have that long if we need to do anything about it.

The EU Again

I am in favour of the UK remaining part of the EU but have to admit that recent events make me sympathise with those in the UK who want the UK to leave. David Cameron's attempts at renegotiation strike me as a largely irrelevant side show, window dressing rather than addressing the core issues. EU President Juncker has been reported as complaining of the lack of action by individual members of the EU over the immigrant crisis. Lack of action by individual members? What about action by the EU? The EU has spent billions of euros creating embassies all over the place for no purpose that anyone can sensibly define. It wants to create a European armed force that could take no action at all unless 28 countries with differing agendas could agree to it. It seems more and more that the EU wants an ever expanding budget to create an ever larger bureaucracy but, when practical problems arise, it wants individual member states to resolve them. That doesn't bode well for a pro-EU result from the UK referendum.

The cost per capita in the UK of EU membership is already high and seems bound to get higher. So what is the return if the EU can't act on practical problems? If Greece is pushed out, as seems likely, and the UK opts out, the cost of membership per capita for other countries will rise steeply. Is that what is needed to get the EU to reform itself? Because it will surely have to then.