INTRODUCTION

“A Minister of Health once told me he hoped that the problem of providing dental treatment under the NHS would go away. It has.” Dr. Nigel Knott (Letters Daily Telegraph 22 September 2022)

“The NHS has hardly anything to do with promoting health being concerned only with sickness and it is the very opposite of a service” (Sunday Telegraph 25 September 2022 P21)

“For many of us the NHS is no longer sacred  …. Just as NHS dentistry provision went patchy and the private sector boomed, the same is happening in general(medical) practice”  (The Times 26 September 2022 P27)

The time has arrived to look into reforming the NHS in the entirely different light of it being a State monopoly. The opposite is true in dentistry as the NHS Terms and Conditions for a Dental Contract are so unattractive that leave the private practice sector with no realistic competition and patients experiencing sky rocketing private fees as a result. The opposite is true in general medical practice where the remuneration of GP’s remains relatively attractive but there are growing numbers transferring to private practice.  

The hero worship and reverence in which the NHS continues to bathe, is obscuring any clear vision of the very obvious shortcomings and expensive failures. It has taken the cataclysmic shock of Covid-19 to expose some of them. A dose of strong medicine to remedy the fundamental flaws in the NHS provision of socialised healthcare is now an imperative. The monopolistic powers of State Medicine today compare with the restrictive practice of medicine in the days of the Ancient Egyptians. The time has come to find long term remedies for the Nation’s illnesses beginning with NHS primary care facilities that should include oral healthcare clinics. A major strategic shift to provide preventive oral healthcare for children from birth and a universal emergency dental care service for adults is a fundamental NHS necessity. The constant annual battle over NHS dental remuneration must end and with it the prodigal waste being expended on the funding of ineffective operative procedures to treat the well-established pandemic of dental decay. The NHS “Teeth for Life” strapline has become an expensive joke whilst the NHS Dental Contract ignores the benefits of an Oral Healthcare Passport for Children (NHS Dental Passport) based upon prevention (4) 

Aneurin Bevan announced the birth of the NHS in 1948 with a prediction that the nation would become healthier when patients no longer had to worry about funding the personal cost of illness. Today, the eye watering annual taxpayer costs of treating the nation’s illnesses (c +£140 billion or more than 40% of public funding) increase as life expectancy lengthens and so the population has become victim to their increasingly unhealthy lifestyles. It is not only the illnesses commonly found in the unfortunate and feckless that require treatment but also the root causes that can only be resisted from worsening with the provision of effective preventive measures being provided in properly appointed NHS Health Clinics.

It is time to reform a National Health Service that has metamorphosed into an unaffordable National Illness Treatment Service (NITS).