Alice Mahon, the former Member of Parliament for Halifax and a long time supporter of the NHS, has finally experienced at first hand the atrocious realities of British nationalised healthcare.
Having spent years pontificating about the wonders of an equitable state run health system she has finally come up against the institutional reality of the NHS.
Having sadly lost much of her sight in one eye due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) she now looks set to lose it in the other one because Calderdale Primary Care Trust has refused to fund a medicine which might well help to stabilise or improve the situation.
Complaining she has “been an ardent supporter of the NHS all my life, and now feel totally let down” she quite rightly saw the light and has gone down a radically different path. To avoid totally losing her eyesight she has privately self funded to the tune of £5,325.
Just think, if only she had thought more rationally about health policy over the years she would not be in this sorry state. If only she and her colleagues had done us all a favour and campaigned for more co-payments or an expansion of private medical insurance then millions of people would not be experiencing the type of shoddy, restrictive and rationed service she now is.
January 30, 2007 at 10:25 pm
[...] on former Labour MP Alice Mahon NFR – the free market nurses group – has just published a great article on the former Labour MP Alice [...]
February 1, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I am disappointed to read such a negative response on this website.
Poetic justice is a terrible thing to say. There are many of us who could NEVER afford to pay anything towards private insurance. To just assume that this would have been an acceptbale solution is ridiculous.
Perhaps the problem is that we have too many administrators and managers in far too pretty offices and not enough investment in treatment and salaries.
February 25, 2007 at 11:28 pm
When there were sisters on the wards things were much better. They shouldn’t need all those managers – the sisters took care of everything (and the wards were clean too – something that cant be said today). Its just badly run, too many people taking a lot out of it and returning nothing.