Health Scares

Lots today about the cost of PFI schemes and the resultant burden on the finances of the National Health Service. Well, I have a brilliant fix for the NHS and it is so simple I am amazed nobody thought of it before.

Currently, drug companies collude with the medical profession to invent all manner of new conditions for which their drugs appear to offer some relief. This is well known and documented, with the real drug research being carried out on paying customers and many middle-men benefiting from the practice. It's been going on for years and I have no issue with private companies profiting from the ignorance or gullibility of the masses; in fact government relies on gullibility to be able govern at all.

But it's not going to happen in my health service - oh yes, there will be one; somebody has to keep the workers fit to work. And therein lies the problem with the present NHS. Over the years, doctors have altered their practice from simply fixing folk to comprehensively meddling with the malingerers to invent excuses.

Doctors will henceforth be required to diagnose idlers, skivers, fantasists and plain old fakers. The shiftless and idle will be prescribed a spot of hard work to get them back on their feet and medical treatment will be reserved only for those with genuine, serious illness.

'Wellness' will cease to be an acceptable term and most types of psychologist* will be struck off the medical register and rebranded as 'a bit mad'. Everybody feels under the weather now and then; the difference is that in my system you will just have to put up with it and stop whinging. Similarly 'low self-esteem', in fact anything for which counselling is currently prescribed, will be removed from the list of condition that the state will treat you for.

Bingo. Cutting health spending at a stroke. Another blow for the dependency culture and a major step forward for good old common sense. Okay, so we'll lose a few, but it's just got to be seen as collateral damage. If you seriously want a healthy society we have to get rid of unfounded illnesses and treatments. Job done.

As for 'alternative' therapies. Go on, have a guess what I think about them...

(*Pyschology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, behavioural studies, sociology, criminology et al will be deemed to be harmless hobbies, but not worthy of the status of proven medical disciplines. Most of those thus qualified had better get to grips with a stethoscope or go private.)