The News
Britain’s National Health Service — a revered institution that politicians have tried to modernize for decades — is in “critical condition,” a new report warned on Thursday.
The nine-week review authored by surgeon Lord Darzi, who served as a health minister in the last Labour government, said “ballooning” wait times, poor productivity, and crumbling infrastructure had left the health service in “serious trouble.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the health service must “reform or die,” and promised ”the biggest reimagining of the NHS” since its creation, with a new 10-year plan to be published in the coming months.
SIGNALS
Starmer seeks to blame the Tories — but risks looking powerless
The prime minister blamed the report’s findings on cuts to public services overseen by the previous Conservative government, describing the 2010s as the National Health Service’s “lost decade.” Privatization of healthcare, which accelerated under the Conservative government, has previously been linked to increased mortality, and long emergency room wait times, which also increased in recent years, may cause as many as 14,000 additional deaths a year, the new report found. However, Starmer’s eagerness to blame the Conservatives for what are long-standing problems risks crossing the “fine line between toxifying the Tories and making yourself look powerless,” the New Statesman wrote.
Health Service should focus on health, rather than sickness
The UK spends less on health care than do similar national economies on a per-person basis. However, the NHS’ tendency to focus on treatment rather than prevention is “the equivalent of buying more fire extinguishers while dismantling smoke alarms,” The Economist argued. Starmer’s 10-year plan for the NHS apparently involves shifting some care from hospitals into communities, moving toward a preventative health care model, but the plan hasn’t been released yet and the details are unclear. One clue may lie in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — thought to be an unofficial adviser for Starmer — in 2023 proposed a nationwide preventative-health program — complete with mobile health screening units and personalized wearable health devices — to sit alongside the NHS.
Plans to ‘digitize’ health care are controversial
One feature of Starmer’s plan will likely be to continue to “digitize” the NHS: Labour’s election manifesto proposed new digital health records for children with the aim of boosting vaccine uptake. The idea is not without controversy: NHS England faces a privacy lawsuit over its “federated data platform,” which allows different health service trusts and care systems to share patient information, The Guardian wrote.