Lets confront the lies:

Myth 1: The NHS is outdated.

Truth: It is inspiring the healthcare systems in France and America to move to the British style of healthcare.

Myth 2: Waiting list cuts are government spin.

Truth: Derek Machin of BMA, essentially a Tory union, has complained that private hospitals are going bust due to waiting list cuts.

Myth 3: It's all beaurocracy.
Truth: Hospital porters are counted as beaurocrats. Secretaries who are taking much moaned about paperwork OUT of the hands of nurses are beaurocrats.

Myth 4: It's a black hole.
Truth: £5 billion, just £5 billion taken out of private pension funds sent waiting lists crashing. So called 'beaurocrats', aka Nurses save money by going around wards, reviewing how lack of beds and theatre space lead to a high NHS defecit. The defecit of several billion pounds has been wiped out.

Myth 5: Only beaurocrats are being employed.
Truth: 78,000 nurses and 20,000 doctors have been employed.

Myth 6: There's no privacy.
Truth: Re-constucted and new hospitals have especially seen more single rooms, which are coming up close to BUPA levels. Of course more needs to be done, but there ARE less mixed-sex wards, and there ARE more single rooms.

Myth 7: It's all about the staff, not the patients.
Truth: The one complaint most prevalant among staff, is not about NHS standards, but about pay. When I went for a heart operation earlier this year, I had never realised how gruesome a job for carers and nurses can be. Staff currently have to pay for parking, as well as patients.

Myth 8: There's a high dissatisfaction rate.
Truth: Every opinion poll suggests that the vast majority of people who recieve NHS care are satisfied with their care. The same polls show that these people maintain that the NHS is in a bad state. If the first poll is true, the second poll can be negated.

Myth 9: The staff are dissatisfied with the NHS.
Truth: Opinion polls suggest anger is over pay. The staff who publically berate Labour around election time don't provide good reasons for disatisfaction. Cathy Doughty who led the booing of Patricia Hewitt two years ago, complained that government imposed targets forced A&E's to have a maximum 4-hour wait, which meant even more serious cleaning for serious infections.



I am not suggesting there cannot be improvements. We need the Dutch model to combat MRSA. We need to provide free parking, free prescriptions, and sort out NHS dentistry. But lets not pretend that the Tories opposing NHS spending rising above average European levels as a percentage of GDP, and likely reversing this, will result in superior healthcare. It will reverse significant improvements we have made.

The job is not yet done though, and combating infection would be far more indicaive of this. Continuing to raise healthcare spending to sort out the other three problems mentioned (as well as improving pay), will be indicative of this.

But lets not allow right-wingers to drive our most sacred element of Britishness into a privatised ditch.