I’m voting to save the NHS

I’m embarrassed to admit, that I used to dismiss talk of the ways the NHS was changing. I’d read a few things, but never really understood what it all meant.  I never really grasped the true nature of the health service, its history and the way it is being altered today. I shrugged off talk about private companies taking over, and counter-argued with the fact that the population was growing, ageing, and as a result the way we funded its care needed to change. But for the past 18 months I’ve covered medical politics for a number of titles, including the New Statesman, Open Democracy, and others. It’s been a fascinating, often painful education. I have met with nurses, doctors, academics, politicians, campaigners, patients and concerned members of the public, who have spelled out what is happening to our NHS. The other day I had a particularly sad conversation, with a nurse I was interviewing for a feature. He described the death of what he called a “moral economy” among NHS workers. He said: “There was almost a family environment in hospitals before. That’s been taken away; the market has ripped the heart and soul out of the service”. In 2015 we face a lot of big issues as a country – low productivity, public expenditure which well outstrips our national income, environmental challenges, the need to find a fair balance on immigration and so on. They’re all important, but I’m not expert enough to make any big statements on them […]