Fisking Polly Toynbee – Part Four

The NHS is the most efficient health system in the world: now it is well financed, it can be the best.

But that's a long way away from saying they're any good. It could quite easily be the case that other countries provide operations of higher quality. Ones where, for instance, there's no 2-year waiting list or no MRSA super bug or where nursing staff are pleasant to you and the wards are nice places to be. If money is to be spent then I would suggest much of it would have to go on these areas which, of themselves, would not actually increase the number of operations performed.

There is also the issue of scalability - the ease at which you increase the size of something. Doctors, nurses, hospitals and operating theatres do not grow on trees. It takes many years for them to appear. The Splurge might look good over the next two years but it won't be long before the next recession kills it stone dead. And then where will we be?

This is also something odd going on here. Miss Toynbee claims that the NHS is "efficient" implying that that is a good thing. So, how did it get to be good? I can't imagine that it has become massively more efficient over the last 6 years of Labour Government - after all, it doesn't seem to have changed much in any other respect - so the conclusion must be that it must be the old Conservative Government that must take the credit. Miss Toynbee, do be careful.