Elections, Politics and Health Spending?

Health is good; therefore spending on health must be good; therefore democratic politicians at election time, when they want our votes, promise us more health care.

            In Britain, since 1948, the expansion of the NHS has been based on one extraordinary idea - that as health is ‘good’, a vote winner, so spending on health must also be ‘good’. It is this one single idea that has allowed the NHS to grow at such a phenomenal rate!

But what if the additional money is spent on a health care system that does not work; and whose drugs and treatments cause further damage to our health? This is what has been happening in democracies around the world for the last 100 years, or more".

• we are unwell,
• we accept ineffective pharmaceutical drugs,
• they make us sicker,
• so we demand more health care,
• and we get more ineffective, sickening health care, which compounds our sickness,
• ..... so we demand even more to be spent on health care!

Eventually, an ineffective and iatrogenic health care system dominates not only our health, but the national economy; and is now even threatening to effectively 'bankrupt' governments. There is no more money to spend.

I am not going to defend these statements here. I really don't need to - the evidence is happening right now. In the UK and India we are already in the midst of election campaigns in which health spending is dominating the political debate. European and USA elections will follow later in the year. So the proof of the statements made here will be clear for all to observe.

• We are sick (unasked question: why are we sicker now than we ever have been before?)
• We want more health care (unasked question: what sort of health care do you actually want/need?)
• Okay, Okay - we are listening (we want your vote), so we will give you yet more of the health care that is not making you better, and making you sicker).
• Then we can watch as politicians out-bid each other with spending commitments on moving more resources into pharmaceutical medicine.
• Listen, very carefully, you might be able to hear the gleeful response of the drug companies as they vie with each other to get hold of more of the new money. Later, we will be able to see that their profits have escalated, again).
  
• Ultimately, we will be able to watch how chronic diseases (allergy, arthritis, asthma, autism, autoimmune diseases, cancer, dementia, diabetes, epilepsy, heart/kidney/liver/lung disease, mental health, et al) have continue on their inexorable, epidemic rise to new unprecedented levels.
  

If that does not happen, please let me know!