I have had occasion to visit hospitals quite a bit in the last five years in the UK. Whilst we can always pick holes in services offered, and even services purchased, it is overlooked by those who complain just how amazing are in historical terms, free health care actually is, even in America the fountain of democracy, the medical care given to the poor is nothing as advanced as that received in Europe.
The concentration of equipment and personnel all trained and paid for from central taxes, that propel a system designed to help everyone they can help to the best of their ability, the checks and balances in place to oversee the errors, the continual advance in good practice, the feed back from the patients, the sheer weight of help available in a series of buildings dotted around every community, is a marvel that most human beings would never believe possible.
Yet people do not look back very far and many consider what they have as a ‘right’, and they want more and more. So do many doctors who see genetic research as a way of increasing their effectiveness without exponential growth in costs. I can see the argument that in centring our focus on modern health care, we have created a tradition that has thrown out herbal and other medicines in their entirety though sometimes they would still be useful.
But I cannot see any depth of criticism. The NHS is a marvel.