Happy Birthday NHS

[la_marquise]

The NHS, the brilliant, life-saving creation of Aneurin Bevan, is 65 today. In those 65 years, it has saved millions, prevented epidemics, given millions back their health, helped millions deal with complex medical needs. It is a beacon of altruism, kindness, decency and genuine social equality. When it comes to health care in the UK, we really are 'all in it together' because it is there to help all of us, regardless of colour, gender, sexual orientation, creed, class or wealth status.
The Greed party and their friends want to take this away from us. They want to cream off lucrative services as money-making presents for their fat cat friends and selves. They continue to subscribe to free market ideology in the face of 30 years of evidence to the effect that unregulated markets solve nothing, create, sustain and increase inequality and destory lives, societies, cultures and economies. The majority of the population of the UK is opposed to this policy of privatisation for its own sake (and to line the pockets of the wealthy even further).
I'm proud of the NHS. I'm proud to live in a country that created it. (There are many things about the UK of which I am not proud at all. But I am proud of this one thing.) I support the NHS wholeheartedly.
We need to keep fighting for it. We need to do our best to ensure it's there to help, to support and to save those who come after us.

Skirt of the day: blue batik print.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

This, absolutely and see my recent rant about Tory policy.

[vaughan-stanger.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I wish we were that smart.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Yes. Simply yes.

[much-of-a.livejournal.com]

I wanted to say complicated stuff (because it's not that simple, it never is, the ideal and the practise always differ), but the most important thing is to keep it, and not to make it just the fallback for "difficult" things that private companies can't or won't handle. The ideal, and striving to keep it, is what matters.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I remember my parents horror stories about the way their parents had to scrape and save to provide them with healthcare (and all those 'granny's remedies?' they weren't 'alternative medicine - for the poor they were the only 'medicine'.

Taking dentistry out of the NHS was a mistake, taking anything else out would be a disaster.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

Couldn't agree with you more.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Without the NHS...
* my grandma's and my dad's long, ultimately terminal fights with cancer would have bankrupted the family twice over;
* I would probably have died in childbirth, or my first baby would have (or both of us);
* my friend, A, would have died of pancreatic cancer 13 years ago and she's still walking round smiling.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Yes!

I would have died as a baby.

I'd probably have committed suicide in my early teens.

My late MiL's long term medical needs at the end of her life would have bankrupted us.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I just don't get countries like the USA who have a large proportion of the population who think that free health care is a bad idea. Ultimately they would pay a lot less in taxes than they now pay in insurance and the medical profession / pharmaceutical industry would have to stop running their businesses for profit. It's adding profit into the equation that doesn't make sense. Sure, pay workers a decent and equitable wage; cover the cost of pharma research and development, but cut out the profit to the middle man and no one need go wthout health care, whatever their personal circumstances..

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I don't understand that, either. It makes no sense to me.