There is far too much beauracracy within the NHS. The government is constantly enforcing new targets which must be met. This simply makes forces medical staff to jump through hoops in order to achieve what they are there to do. I am absolutely certain that 99.9% of our NHS workers all want to give the best treatment to patients as soon as possible, and they are in the best position to see how to do that.
Enforcing all the additional paperwork and regulations costs time and money, it also requires additional jobs for people to ensure that the targets are met. The NHS ends up having to do a second job in order to perform its primary job. There should be less paperwork, less middle management to manage the paperwork, and more ground-level employees.
Too many people attend accident and emergency departments when they should wait and see their doctor. I think that people who do this should still be seen (in a priority order, as it is now) and still have the option of being given a prescription. However, I think that the prescription given should be of a special type that costs more money per item. Emergency services used on a non-emergency basis would therefore incur both a long wait plus an increased fee. People who are unsure about whether their situation is an emergency or not will not be treated any differently from they are today, except for the fact that if they wish to obtain medicine for their non-emergency situation they will have to pay more money.
It disgusts me when I hear news reports about someone having to pay thousands of pounds per month for drugs that will prolong their life. These drugs are considered too expensive to be supplied by the NHS, so people are having to sell remortgage their houses in order to buy them privately.
Between January and March of 2008 GlaxoSmithKline recorded NET profits of 30 million US dollars. Yet there are people dying because they cannot afford medicine. Is it acceptible that people must die in order to maintain the profits of a massive company? Research and development for cures is understandably an expensive business, and drugs companies must make as much of their money back as possible before their patent expires and competitors are allowed to reproduce their drug.
I propose that drugs companies have a forced cap on the price of their drugs, this cap could be reviewed annual by MP's. In exchange for lowering the price of their drugs the company would be rewarded with a 100 year patent. This much longer patent would protect their investment for much longer, allowing them to recooperate their costs and make their profits over a longer period, bringing down the cost of medicine. With the cost of medicine much lower more people would be able to receive treatment, and savings made by lower costs could be pushed back into the NHS service to employ more doctors, nurses, and other vital medically trained staff.