For Tony Blair, the NHS Direct 24-hour phone-line offers an empathic 'one-to-one' contact with every atomised citizen. The effect of this, and numerous similar initiatives, on the NHS is to boost the demand for health care to a level that is unsustainable for any publicly funded service. The NHS cannot survive current attempts to use it to bolster the government's prestige and to solve all the problems of society.
The lesson of the past three years is that if extra funds are linked to politically-inspired projects like waiting-list initiatives, the problems of the NHS will not improve. Every government initiative serves only to inflate expectations that are destined to be disappointed. Health-related political stunts only intensify popular fears, demoralise health care workers and have a distorting effect on the provision of services.
Politicians, doctors and the public are locked into a spiral of anxiety around issues of health. Politicians who have lost their influence in society and doctors who have lost their confidence in scientific medicine face a public of increasingly isolated and insecure individuals for whom health has become a morbid preoccupation. The first step towards overthrowing the tyranny of health is to remove health care from politics and return it to the care and treatment of the sick.
Michael Fitzpatrick is a GP in Hackney. His book The Tyranny of Health is published by Routledge.
This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.
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