The three main parties have now more or less signed up to an £8bn/yr budget increase for the NHS by the end of the next Parliament. As if this miserly 7% additional funding (before inflation!) in five years time, is likely to lift the NHS out of its present dire state! But never mind, they obviously think that we're too stupid to see through their electioneering. Dismal as it is, however, this pledge conceals a cynical sleight of hand.
Indeed, it is supposed to be based on the funding requirement recommended by the current head of the NHS and former Blair adviser, Simon Stevens. Except that Stevens came to the conclusion that the NHS would need an additional £30bn/yr by 2020. So where will the £22bn/yr shortfall come from? Quite simply from what politicians call "efficiencies" - meaning cuts in staff and services, of course!
The lethal cost of austerity
What these "efficiencies" mean in the real world was spelt out in an open letter signed by over 140 doctors - both GPs and hospital practitioners - which was published this week in the papers.
What they tell is the sorry tale of the NHS since Cameron came into office with his pledge to "ring-fence" the health budget. And the raw figures speak for themselves.
Since 2010, over 500 GP surgeries have closed, so that Britain has now the fourth lowest number of GPs per inhabitant among the 27 European Union countries. 51 NHS walk-in centres have been closed together with 66 A&E and Maternity wards. But, at the same time, due to the collapse of social care caused by the ConDems' 40% cut in local council funding, the number of over-75s resorting to A&E departments has shot up by 34%. Meanwhile, over 3m people are officially on NHS waiting lists in need of treatment - a 6-year high!
To quote the doctors' open letter: "patients have been left queueing in ambulances and NHS trusts have resorted to erecting tents in hospital car parks to deal with unmet need."
Such is the state of the NHS after 5 years of endless talk about "patient choice" aimed at concealing criminal policies which only reduced the chances patients had to be properly cared for. It is little wonder that, under their watch, the number of years pensioners can hope to live hasn't increased and, in the case of women, has even gone down!
The fact that the NHS has kept plodding on despite the ConDem-generated chaos and still managed to treat so many people, may seem like a miracle. But, in fact, it was primarily thanks to its workers doing crazy hours in intolerable conditions, despite the 21,000 jobs they have lost since 2010 and the pay freeze they were subjected to.
The problem is the profit system
However, contrary to what the signatories of the doctors' open letter imply, it would be misleading to believe that Labour - or any other party, for that matter - has anything better in store for the NHS.
Can anyone forget that many of Cameron's policies were already implemented - or even initiated - by the previous Labour governments?
Today, Cameron boasts of having "increased productivity" in the NHS. But when was this ludicrous notion of NHS "productivity" introduced in the first place, as if patients were merely engines that had to be patched up on a repair line? It was actually introduced under Labour.
Of course, this was the logical consequence of Labour's choice to retain the NHS "internal market" they had inherited from their predecessors - a "market" whose permanent chaos is estimated to cost close to £5bn/yr to the NHS today!
It was also under Labour that a decisive boost was given to a form of privatisation by stealth in the NHS. Of course, Labour tried to conceal its importance, whereas Cameron is proud of it. But that's the only substantial difference between them. And the fact is that, ever since Blair's days, more and more shareholders have been lining their pockets out of the NHS budget. Today, in addition to the pharmaceutical giants which have always lived off the NHS, a whole private "healthcare" industry is parasitising the NHS budget - and this is a decisive factor in its increasing shortage of vital human and material resources.
The problem with the NHS, therefore, just as with every other policy issue is not which party is in government - but which social interests it serves. And the main parties make no secret of where they stand - they are "business friendly". This means that the only future they can offer us, the working class majority, is to pay for the profits of the capitalist minority - with our labour and our health. That is, as long as we let them!