No Wealth But Life: What's Gone Wrong with Healthcare in Britain & How We Can Save the NHS

Far too many of us are not flourishing and far too many will never even get the opportunity to flourish. It is society and we that need fixing before we attempt to fix our healthcare system. The dream is dying in front the eyes of any in our era who are prepared to see. The homely blue and white flag of humane collective interdependence we stand under is fraying at the edges. The threads unwind above us in a storm of neoliberal ideology and human frailty as we desperately rally round and try to keep the flagpole upright. The certainty that pervaded the United Kingdom's national psyche about the purpose, character, and enduring capacity of itself and its National Health Service, has been replaced with wilfully blind baseless and ultimately self-defeating optimism. The shaking structures of the NHS are more than merely a reflection of the erosion of society and the ascendency of self. The presence of a functioning publicly funded health and care system is a litmus test for the presence of civilization. An institutional indicator species that bodes well for the environment it exists within.

But whatever the challenge facing us it's important we don't fall into the trap of thinking we imagined the present we have or the organisations and institutions that are in it or the way they work. The present we live in is the future we and others created and is largely the result of unintended outcomes. There is no reason a different future can't be created and a great many reasons why it should be. Can Britain become one of the healthiest most equitable nations on earth? Could our National Health and Care Service become the largest closely coordinated learning organisation in the world?