At the end of the day, my real complaint, which triggered this thread is not specifically about the NHS at all, since I have experienced similar bad practice in business and in private life. It is just that the NHS has institutionalised it.

Put simply, if you arrange an appointment with someone to meet at a specific time, then you should make every effort to keep that apointment and you should be realistic in your scheduling in order to achieve that. If you cannot keep the appointment, or will be late, then you should make every reasonable effort to minimise the inconvenience you cause. Frankly, the fact that you are a doctor, a celebrity, a senior manager, a parent, old, young is no reason to depart from this.

It’s a bit like trying to compare two pairs of speakers where one is being driven by a £1k CD player and Amp and the other a by a £500 CD player and Amp. How can you tell what of what you hear is the difference between the speakers and what is the difference between the sources.

“For decades, the alibi for the NHS’ failure to meet the expectations – and the needs – of patients has been a supposed lack of funding. Despite the evidence from across the Channel that almost any other method is more successful at giving patients what they require, the NHS’ cheerleaders have been able to live in a political comfort zone.”

“I would much rather be treated under the Belgian system than I would under the NHS, it’s a “no brainer” as they say.”

Both quotes are Stephem Pollard, New Labour ‘guru’, more here

You know that I am no fan of New (the party formerly known as Labour), but a lot of what Pollard has to say makes considerable sense to me.

You see I’d argue that the problems with the NHS are in the main about trying to deliver a service with an inadequate resource. I am not saying there isn’t inefficiency and incompetence (and removing that needs to be done), there is any organisation and should be addressed. But to say that your wait (when compared to the service in the private sector or Germany) is due to incompetency is I believe wrong.

Germany spends 50 per cent more of their GDP on healthcare than the UK. Their life expectancy is the same. Not sure how one compares impact of care on health of the nation,
so not sure how it can be demonstrated that their healthcare system is more than 50% better in VFM terms than UK. A number of academic papers comparing health systems find that the UK is better (marginally). http://www.davidgratzer.com/report1/5.html for example, but I don’t understand the methodology enough to know if these have any real meaning.