Britons should try and avoid getting drunk as the country’s NHS socialised healthcare service will struggle to look after them, a chief from the organisation has agreed.
Matthew Taylor, the head of the National Health Service Confederation in the UK, has agreed in an interview that Britons should avoid getting drunk as the country’s socialised healthcare service will struggle to look after them.
It comes shortly after healthcare services in England and Wales were paralyzed on Wednesday by pay-striking ambulance drivers.
In an interview on BBC 4’s Today programme, Taylor emphasised that the full impact of the strike was likely not going to be felt for a number of days, but feared that its impact could be catastrophic, especially considering the fact the healthcare service was already struggling under a sudden spike in respiratory illnesses.
The NHS chief was then asked by the interviewer whether advice previously given to Britons not to get drunk or engage in other reckless activity as the healthcare service would struggle to look after them should be made a general recommendation, to which he agreed.
“It is important that the public use the NHS in the best way they can,” he told the programme, before adding that: “We should also have a message to people not to indulge in behaviours that are bad for their health and risky.”
However, he added that, while it was admirable that many members of the general public refrained from calling the emergency services on Wednesday to ease the strain, the NHS needed to be brought back into functioning condition to avoid creating massive backlogs.
“I think we can’t ask the public to cope day-in day-out with not having the services the NHS wants to offer,” Taylor said. “And also we have to remember that what we saw during COVID is that if people can’t get access to NHS services, they don’t — for example — talk about the symptoms they have, they don’t come forward, and then that starts to create pent-up demand.”
“So, yes, people should use the NHS responsibly, but we shouldn’t discourage people from using the NHS when they need to use it because that is not good for them, and ultimately, that is not good for the health service,” he concluded.
The NHS chief — who is said to be a former chief advisor on political strategy to Iraqi war architect Prime Minister Tony Blair — was then asked how he thought the strikes would be finally put to an end, to which he said that he would rather not answer.
“I don’t want to make a prediction,” he replied. “What happens will depend upon the intentions of the parties here, and if the government and if the trade unions feel that a winter of industrial action is a price worth paying to maintain the stance that they’ve got then that will happen and that will have severe effects.”
However, while Taylor went on to add that he hoped that “a bit of imagination” and a “bit of pragmatism” would help break the deadlock, it is likely that many workers within the service will not feel like they can avoid backing down amid soaring energy, food, and housing costs.
Just days before Christmas, inflation in Britain remains at a nearly 40-year high, with many within Britain’s health service going so far as to resort to using food banks to manage the fact their paycheck has been cut down by inflation.
What’s more, such inflation is only expected to come down by the middle of next year according to the Bank of England, with various worldwide instabilities within the global food and fuel market having the possibility to extend the hardship even further.