A Lazy Sunday?

What better way of spending a lazy Sunday than by lying in bed with a good book all morning, and most of the afternoon as well, and then heading off to spend a couple of hours in the theatre? Except, on this occasion, the bed was a hospital bed and the theatre was an operating theatre.

I’m back out of the hospital and back home, after what was a fairly minor and routine operation last Sunday for a small hernia. The injury was sustained, I very much suspect, by over-zealously moving tables and chairs at a literature event back in March—I have vague recollections of people asking, “Do you want help with those tables?”, and me blithely grunting, “No, I’m doing fine!” So I have nobody to blame but myself. And whilst it has been something of an inconvenience, it is good to have the operation out of the way. The staff in the Leicester General Hospital were excellent, with a perfect mix of reassurance, competence and good cheer, and the operation went smoothly, without any complications.

I don’t really have much to say about the whole experience, other than that I feel very grateful for how well looked-after I was. The level of care was truly exceptional. And I was struck, as I often am when I have dealings with the health service, by the ordinary, everyday human warmth of everybody involved.

It is traditional to say, after a good experience with the NHS, how much one loves the NHS. And it is traditional, after a bad experience, to berate the NHS for its failings. But I’m a little suspicious of both of these tendencies. I’m suspicious, in part, because this conflates ideas of “standard of care” with the deeper questions about how healthcare should be paid for. As a result, the argument from “standard of care” is often used to justify the creeping privatisation that is being pushed by the present government. But in my view, the idea of a National Health Service should be rooted, first and foremost, not in questions of standard of care, but instead in questions of principle.

What are these questions of principle? There are three that come to mind: firstly that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of ability to pay; secondly, that good health is not just an individual good, but also a public good (after all, it is in my interests not only that I am healthy, but that you are healthy as well, and it is in your interests that I am healthy…); and thirdly that, as a broad public good, health care is most sensibly paid for by a system of fair and rigorous taxation.

In my view (and the spirit of the times is against me, I know), the question is not whether privatised, public or public-private healthcare provides the best standard of care. Instead, the question is how, within a public healthcare system, it is possible to make sure that care is of the highest possible standard, for the benefit of all. Because only a properly public healthcare system can really reflect the fact that healthcare is itself a public good.

Anyway, I’m now back home and there have been no complications, so I’m spending a couple of resting, reading books, hobbling around, checking in on my email (I was impressed by uncannily appropriate spam message I received this morning urging me to “get a ripped abdomen for free…”), watching bad Taiwanese soap operas, and trying to persuade the cat — who is very impressed that I am spending so much time swathed in blankets on the sofa — not to leap too vigorously upon my wound.

Normal service will be resumed in due course. But my heartfelt thanks go to the excellent staff at Leicester General.