I am naturally a little cautious about anybody who receives a fairly instant award of this nature. The Nobel Prize committee can take decades to make their awards and all the ramifications can be explored. However with regard to this fellow, I can't see it does any harm but not sure it does much good either. I contrast that with Sir Bradley Wiggins and various others where one might in the cold light of day think again.
In fact I believe the money raised went to charities that support staff, carers, patients and so on rather than the NHS itself. The reality is that the NHS will never have enough money. Economics tells us that for anything that is free there is the potential for unlimited demand. This is usually managed by the price or time mechanism. We all understand price, and Soviet citizens queueing for bread know more than most about the time mechanism.
It is all this lauding of the NHS that sits very poorly with me. Yes, the staff do an amazing job and often for modest rewards. But the fundamentals of how it operates are to my mind wrong. it was bust before it started and has a relentless demand for more money, when what I think it needs is a different business model with the introduction of higher personal responsibility that manages the open ended commitment to service that "free at the point of use" implies. Whilst I am not advocating charging per se, something more like the Singapore model where individuals have more responsibility through the system that has been put in place. It has one of the highest health outcomes of any country in the world, and one of the lowest per capita costs. Compare that with the US where health care is the most expensive in the world with indifferent outcomes, and around a third of the population have poor or no health cover.
Unfortunately change of such nature is politically very difficult and if proposed I suspect would start a maelstrom of politicking and infighting. Maybe one day when the system finally stops working.
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Arise Sir Tom Moore new
Arise Sir Tom Moore new
