I was struck by a conversation I had with my French mother recently. She’d fallen at work and hurt her arm and shoulder. Her colleagues had called the paramedics, they had looked her over and put her arm in a splint as she wasn’t badly injured. To be sure she was OK, she’d booked an appointment with her GP that afternoon who had signed her off work for 2 days and prescribed 5 sessions with a physiotherapist to help her recover full mobility. All of this was on the ‘Sécu’ – the French National Health Service. She told me this casually, as if the excellent care she had received was nothing exceptional and expected.

Because it was. Her experience was perfectly normal, they pay for healthcare in their taxes and they expected good care in return. 

As she was talking I realised that, had this conversation happened in the UK, she would not have received anywhere near the same level of care (if any at all) and her tone would have been one of gratitude. In the UK, we also pay for healthcare in our taxes, yet we don’t receive it. And the strangest part for me is that we’re all so grateful for the lack of care we experience.

This is a uniquely British trait, we are all so proud and ever-grateful for the NHS. I agree. Our National Health Service is a wonderful institution and we should be happy and feel lucky that we live in a country where healthcare is free at the point of use and universal. 

There is, however, another dimension to this gratitude. It keeps us quiet. It is such a powerful sentiment that seemingly going against it or complaining in any way about the NHS is seen as dangerous and any criticism can get you ‘cancelled’ in a heartbeat.

The result is that we are grateful for at-best-mediocre service. 

How often have I heard horror stories of misdiagnosis, inexistent care, and never-ending waiting lists – all with often terrible health consequences. However, these stories usually end with ‘but they do the best they can’ or ‘we’re so lucky to have the NHS’. That’s not to mention that it is almost impossible to see a doctor for less serious illnesses, and the best we can hope for in the UK is a 10 minute phone call with an overworked doctor who doesn’t know who you are, has no context as to why you’re calling and takes an educated guess as to what the problem might be as they haven’t physically examined you.

We accept and even apologise for bad care because we’re grateful and we confuse healthcare staff with the system.

Let me make one thing clear, I’m criticising the system NOT the people in it. The doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff are trapped in this inadequate system and they do what they can within it. We should recognise and be grateful for them.

Politicians have understood the silencing powers of gratitude and use it as a shield to not fix the system. We all clapped for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, but didn’t make plans to improve the system, pay doctors more, or hire more nurses. 

No. We were encouraged to show gratitude as a nation, and the politicians moved on. 

I think anyone working in the NHS would agree that they could probably do with less clapping but have more money and better working conditions to provide better care.

If we don’t start complaining and expecting better from this system, it will continue to deteriorate. Healthcare is not an electable issue so politicians make no real effort to fix it and only reference it with platitudes in speeches when they’re campaigning. 

This goes for all aspects of the NHS, there is no basic care, no preventative care, no after care, baffling systems, overrun A&Es, and chronically overworked staff. And that doesn’t even touch on old age care- the main reason I have had to become a carer. I have sacrificed most aspects of my life to look after my grandmother because the system I pay for in my taxes is at worst non-existent and at best inconsistent.

Taking a leaf out of France’s book on this issue would be a good idea, a little higher expectations and a little less gratitude – s’il vous plait – by holding to account those who run the system. The French ‘Sécu’ is by no means a perfect system, but if even one of the NHS horror stories I’ve heard happened in France there would be riots in the streets and reams of paperwork filed to officially complain- a bonus of the French’s obsession with red tape.