Apparently the largest reason that children go to A&E is that they have dental problems. a better explanation of why prevention is better and cheaper than cure it is harder to find. But significant under funding of NHS dentistry, and it has to be said the outrageous prices private dentists charge, have brought us to this pass.
The answer is, of course, pay dentists more for NHS patients and pay them more quickly and with less red tape, but many will still refuse to take anything but private patients. The money will be better and with too few dentists in training they can fill their boots. But it would be a start.
The wider problem is this, the government allowed this crisis to develop, either because it thinks A&E is cheaper than regular check ups or because it doesn’t care.
Since child poverty and childhood illness will blight many people for life, costing a fortune in care and lost opportunities, it is clear the Tories don’t care.
Like cuts to child benefit or the ones stupid enough to actually say “if you can’t afford to feed your children you shouldn’t have had them” the Tories don’t care enough to keep the nation healthy. They hide behind the cost and the moral responsibility of parents, but they just don’t believe in society.
We still, as a nation, boast about the Beveridge report, but it has been dismantled by the Tory party little by little, over the years, by the simple expedient of creating a them and us society.
That is why they scream and shout about the lazy, the feckless, immigration and even the workers from home. This is why they say that the welfare state is unaffordable and holding the country back, why sick pay is slashed and benefits cut to a level it is impossible to live on.
The state can only be smaller if we all spend our untaxed income on doing things the state used to do and should do. If you don’t have enough untaxed income to do that, that is your problem not the government’s.
The result will be like America, where they spend twice as much on healthcare as in the UK for a far worse result. But the wealthy are “All right Jack.”
Unless they get a slow and expensive illness, when even they cannot afford treatment. But by then it is too late to change your mind and support a national health service.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
Spot on, Jonty. And this needs to be read widely and absorbed.
Folk who have, until the last 14 years, thought of themselves as comfortably well off, are beginning to (or need to) realise that their financial security depends on their families having access to good state-provided health, social, and educational services.
Without those services, it’s life on the edge for all but the very wealthy. The “sovereign individuals” of William Rees-Mogg.