Gavin Webb: Libertarian councillor for Stoke & Trent Vale

If you want the very best, of course you’ll have to go private.  We just do what we can do with the resources we have!

That’s pretty much what my local NHS dentist said to me on Friday.  Despite paying plenty of tax, every single taxpayer who accesses NHS dentistry can only expect to receive a poor to mediocre service.

Since March I’ve had a problem with one of my back teeth, and during that time I’ve been dealing with both NHS and private dentistry.  I had not been to see a dentist for over sixteen years and generally my mouth is in good condition (or at least that’s what the private dentist told me.  The NHS dentist gave me no such feedback, even when questioned).

The difference between the private sector and the NHS is startling, and I don’t mean just in terms of the equipment like the little mouth-cam that allows you the patient to see around your mouth, or that takes pictures of your mouth and teeth for future reference; or the x-ray machine that upon your initial visit takes a full mouth x-ray to see if there are any other problems.  No, I mean more fundamentally in terms of the overall attitude of the private sector.

You are a customer.  You are at the private surgery spending your money.  It is in the best interest of the surgery to ensure that you get a good service, for if you don’t you won’t return nor will you recommend the surgery to your friends and family.

As the customer I felt engaged with my treatment.  I knew exactly what was going to happen and I knew – having seen it with my own eyes – what a shocking job the NHS dentist had done with my second filling that a) hadn’t even been properly moulded to fit my tooth, nor b) wasn’t actually, as I had been led to believe, a final filling.  Indeed, the private dentist was rather disgusted by the job.

Of course, one could argue that this was mere dentist/dentist or public/private sector rivalry – but having seen NHS work myself, followed by the job carried out by the private dentist, you can imagine where my trust ends up going.

The filling I now have is only a temporary one until I get a root filling, but despite this I haven’t been in any pain or discomfort.  Unfortunately, I can’t afford to have the root filling carried out in the private sector, and despite paying my National Insurance contribution, I have no choice but to spend it in the NHS.

It is surely a disgrace to in the first instance have money forcibly extracted from you in taxation, and then to add insult to injury, have no choice as to where to spend any of those ‘redistributed’ monies.  Our universal healthcare system allows politicians and bureaucrats – many of whom are on healthy salaries that are more than enough to pay for private healthcare – to dictate the standards of healthcare we the mere proles receive.

When I see campaigns such as the #WeLoveTheNHS Twitter campaign, my blood boils.  I understand that most people want other people to be able to access healthcare if they can’t afford it – I share that sentiment too.  However, I believe the Love NHS campaigners are deluded.  Their NHS is in no way the best way to achieve ‘excellent’ service, and it’s not just service users like me who have come to this conclusion.  Increasingly, NHS doctors and nurses have reached that conclusion too.

The only way in which healthcare services will improve in the UK is to undo the virtual monopoly that is the NHS.  Even if we were to say that taxation will be with us forever and that there will be universal healthcare provision, at least allow service users take their share of their healthcare money wherever they please.  Greater competition in healthcare provision will help bring prices down and will improve services, and as a consequence, more people will be able to afford ‘private’ healthcare standards.