Column

Is this a direct line or a wrong number?

NHS Direct: ‘Good morning. You’re through to NHS Direct. This is Ann speaking. How may I help you?’

Citizen: ‘I’ve got a health care problem I’d like advice on.’

NHS Direct: ‘Please describe the nature of your problem. We may be able to help you manage it at home.’

Citizen: ‘It’s my father. He has this lump on his back. The doctor says it might turn nasty so he needs it removed as soon as possible.’

NHS Direct: ‘It sounds like he’s already safely in the hands of the NHS. What additional advice do you need?’

Citizen: ‘My father has had to wait for 6 months for his operation, and may have to wait for weeks more yet. He can’t go to work because he’s in pain, so he’s being laid off on Friday. He’s devastated about this, and terrified about his illness. I need to know how he can get the operation sooner.’

NHS Direct: ‘Since you are already under the doctor that is not a matter I can help with.’

Citizen: ‘I realise you cannot do anything personally. I’m only asking for information.’

NHS Direct: ‘Does your father have insurance?’

Citizen: ‘No. Should he get some?’

NHS Direct: ‘Unfortunately you have to take out insurance before you’re aware you’re ill. But if he could find some other way of funding the operation there are private surgeons in the Yellow Pages that could do it this week.’

Citizen: ‘Hang on. He does have insurance.’

NHS Direct: ‘Ah. In that case I advise you to contact the company he is insured with to see if his policy covers him.’

Citizen: ‘I am doing. He’s insured with you. Fully comp. Not missed a payment for forty years. Can you book him in now please?’

Ann can’t, of course. That’s not the point of NHS Direct. The new ‘phone service is there to save money, and probably will.

But NHS Direct is not just a sensible cost-saving exercise. It is also a symptom of the superficial culture that’s suffocating us.

Today’s political thought is orchestrated by imagologists — the scientists of Sell. The world over, ‘service-providers’ wrap their goods in layers of hyperbole, even when their customers have no alternative trains or water or roads or hospitals or millennium monuments or armed forces to choose. We have no choice even about being told how lucky we are.

Everywhere there are adverts so self-congratulatory you wonder why they needed to be made, and every time they caress your senses it is another feel-good nail in the coffin of constructive thought. If we’ve never had it so good what is there to worry about?

What really would be Direct? How about an NHS Direct where you could call the NHS consultant at his private practice and have him tell you why your Dad is still waiting for the operation he is about to do for a fee on someone else?

How about an NHS Direct where you could ‘phone Mr Dobson to find out why a couple can get subsidised infertility treatment in some parts of the country and not others?

How about an NHS Direct that would tell you how much taxpayer money is spent on psychiatric drugs, how many expensive freebies NHS trained psychiatrists get to encourage their prescription, and how much profit the pharmaceutical companies make?

A NHS phone-line where you could get the truth about these and a thousand other immoralities would be something to cherish. Under a government committed to democratic accountability and community involvement it might just be something to expect.

The fact it sounds insane merely shows how politically sedated we

have become.