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Friday 18 March 2016

NHS in Crisis (Spring 2016)

The British Medical Association (BMA) has called a special meeting, and 'extraordinary conference', to discuss the 'deepening crisis facing the NHS', according the doctors email magazine, Pulse (16th March 2016). One BA council member is quoted as saying that UK doctors saw the NHS collapsing.

          "The BMA council discussed the parlous state of the NHS due to the year-on-year funding cuts,  something which is a political choice made by this Government. This extraordinary meeting will discuss the crisis in the NHS and attempt to come up with solutions, challenging our politicians to step in and rescue the NHS from collapse."

The problem with this assessment is that there have been no 'year on year' funding cuts. The government has protected cuts to NHS budgets. The problem is that there has been no additional money ploughed into the NHS since 2010, and in 'challenging our politicians to step in and rescue the NHS from collapse' the BMA is, once again, asking for an increase in spending.

It was budget day yesterday, and the BMA chair is quoted as condemning the lack of new investment in NHS services as 'disgraceful'.

The NHS budget has had spending increases every year from its inauguration in 1947. Between 1997 and 2010 the government actually tripled spending on the NHS!

NHS Confederation statistics indicate something of this massive increase in resources.
  • net expenditure on the NHS has increased from £64.173 billion in 2003/04 to £113.300bn in 2014/15.
  • planned expenditure for 2015/16 is £116.574bn
  • Health expenditure (medical services, health research, central and other health services) per capita in England has risen from £1,841 in 2009/10 to £1,994 in 2013/14.
So what is going on. Why cannot the NHS manage on this huge budget? Why, year by year, is our NHS is crisis?

And equally if not more important to the NHS crisis, is another question.
  • Why is the incidence of chronic disease actually increasing, and often increasing at epidemic levels?
What is happening, before our eyes, is that increased spending on the NHS is leading to increased levels of sickness, and has done so for the last 70 years! Increased spending on the NHS is actually making us sicker!

The reason for this, and perhaps the solution that the BMA is NOT looking for at its conference, is that the medicine we are investing in, whenever we increase NHS funding, is actually making us sick!

So what exactly is making us sick? Why is no-one asking this question? Why does increased spending lead to worse results.

If this was happening to any other business, in any other sphere of human activity, the question would be asked, the issue resolved, or the business would go bankrupt.

The answer, being avoided by the NHS and the BMA, is that conventional, drug and vaccine based medicine is failing. It is not making us better. Worse, the hugely increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines we have taken over the last 70 years is actually making us sick.

What is the mechanism for this? It is well known. The conventional medical establishment usually refers to it as 'drug side effects'. Sometimes, it is referred to as 'adverse reactions' to drugs. I refer to it, more accurately, and more in tune with what is happening, as 'DIEs', or the 'disease-inducing effects' of medical treatment.

So the more we spend on conventional medical treatment, dominated as it is by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, the more DIEs we will suffer, the sicker we will be, and the more money the BMA will need in order to respond to it.

It is an ongoing carousel, it has never stopped, it will never stop.

The solution to the problems of the NHS, and the BMA, is more investment in traditional medicine, like naturopathy, homeopathy, herbalism, acupuncture, physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractor, and other therapies that work with, and alongside the body, not against it. Therapies that will treat a condition successful, even cure them, rather than causing more disease.

And then give patients health freedom, the freedom to choose the therapy of their choice!