The National Health Service (NHS) is a health care system which is funded by the public and is found in the United Kingdom. It was established under the National Health Service Act 1946, and has faced many challenges as well as criticism because of a number of factors. Even David Cameron has stated that he loves the NHS, however, it has many deep problems. There are many challenges which NHS faces at the moment and some of them are the aging population, long queues in which patients have to wait for their turn, lifestyle factors, changes in expectations of the public, accident and emergency departments, rising costs and advances in medicine and technology.
The main reason why the NHS was established in the first place was to cure people who had diseases. The diseases which the NHS provides cures for would have killed people 65 years ago, which is a brilliant achievement by the NHS. However, this means that people are living for a long time and this increases the likelihood of them being diagnosed with one or more diseases, particularly in older age. This means that the cost of medicine would increase, as patients would require specialized care and their treatment would be an ongoing process. .
One of the major problems of the NHS includes the long queues or the waiting list that makes patients suffer. According to statistics revealed by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, it has been found out that in the last 12 months, 240,000 patients have been added to the waiting list. Statistics also reveal that 52,000 patients were not given treatment, including cataract operations and varicose vein treatments because the budget of the NHS was cut; this happened in 2012 (Atlas 2013). The reason why the NHS faces budget cuts is because of the actions of successive governments; they cut of 20 billion pounds from the NHS budget, giving the explanation of efficiency saving. These budget cuts have led to serious consequences as now, there is a need to cut down payments of the staff working in the NHS hospitals and completely abolishing the hospitals which are situated in Scotland and Wales.
