The repetition and extensive media coverage that began months before the general election means that most people are all too aware of the electoral ‘battleground’, and how the NHS features amongst this. Labour have made the NHS the central tenet of their election campaign, claiming that the very ‘future of our NHS is at stake in this general election’. This is predominantly a response to scare-mongering claims that the Coalition government is hell-bent on selling off ‘our’ NHS to the highest private bidder. This of course ignores the fact that over two-thirds of outsourced budget was contracted by the Labour Party between 2006 and 2010. But why, if it such political dynamite, does the outsourcing of some NHS services continue to happen? The simple answer, is money (or lack of it). The financial crisis facing the NHS is no secret, but the way the political parties have avoided the topic like a bad smell, you could be forgiven for it having slipped your mind. Recent reports indicate that the NHS faces at least a £2billion shortfall this year, and a best-case scenario of an £8billion annual deficit by 2020 (BBC).

It is the language used by the likes of Miliband to describe the NHS, which give some indication as to the issues which lie at the heart of the political and media classes’ approach to this contentious subject. They blatantly attempt to romanticise and create a sense of nostalgia around the institution. The early days of the NHS are recalled to remind us of this post-war utopian dream, a free health service owned by, and run for the people of Great Britain. The sad reality is that this baby-boomer fantasy is fast becoming unsustainable. In 1951, those over the age of 70 made up just over 6% of the total population of the UK; by 2011, that had almost doubled to 11.5%. Add to that, the huge expense of drugs and procedures which would have been incomprehensible to the NHS founders, along with other factors that go with an ageing population, and the scale of the problem becomes apparent.

It is this very factor, however, which forces the status quo. The NHS holds the most sentimental value, as well as significantly more practical value, for older voters. Given that voter turnout amongst the over 65’s at the last General Election was 74.7%, compared with just 51.8% for 18-24 year old, the NHS has simply become too dangerous to touch. With Britain’s population of over 75’s set to grow to a staggering 13% by 2037, it seems to be a trend unlikely to change.

This is evident when one considers the quiet backtracking of UKIP over the last few months. Nigel Farage once openly stated that, replacing the NHS with an insurance-based system was a debate ‘we’re all going to have to return to’. Nonetheless, he has recently promised an extra £3billion a year to fund the service, a volte-face surely influenced by his party’s desperate attempts to be seen as a ‘serious’ party. The sad fact being that seriousness now fails to extend to mature debate about the future of the National Health Service.

The increasingly short-termist, win at all costs nature of British politics will only serve to damage this country, and hamper any meaningful reform. It seems that, for the foreseeable future, the major parties will continue to avoid the serious consideration that the National Health Service so clearly needs. Instead, they will continue to find increasingly exotic alternatives to an ‘NHS tax’, (as suggested by the Greens, and the only feasible way of funding the short fall whilst keeping the NHS ‘free at the point of service’), and proceed to flog the dead horse well after it should have undergone major surgery.

I by no means intend to take away from the valuable, and often incredibly demanding work undertaken by those employed in the NHS, nor do I believe that the NHS cannot survive as a publicly funded body. Indeed, of the top three European healthcare services as ranked by the EHCI, two have equal or more government funding as a spending percentage. Again, it comes down to money. The top three healthcare systems in Europe all spend more, both publicly and privately for the service they receive. If the United Kingdom and its various NHS trusts want to improve their performance, someone is going to have to pay for it. Whether this is to come in the form of direct taxation or elements of privatisation within the service needs serious debate. What doesn’t, is that it isn’t going to come from, as Labour suggests, a windfall tax on hedge funds, nor libor-rigging fines proposed by the Conservatives, and certainly not from clamping down on ‘healthcare tourism’ as claimed by UKIP.