A society winding down

There have been several significant health-scares among my friends & family recently: aside from my wife (infected finger & near-death experience until the antibiotics kicked in & dealt with the sepsis), a good friend of mine had a stroke, whilst my sister was rushed to hospital yesterday.

Of the 3 cases above, the latter 2 necessitated an ambulance - or at least would have, had an ambulance been available in the UK within 8 hours. Whilst you hear horror stories of ambulances taking hours to turn up, you never quite suspect that it's going to impact your family & friends - but it most definitely did.

What I cannot understand is how the service has got so bad, so quickly. A wait of over an hour was a scandal about a decade ago and now the UK is routinely at a 6 hour wait? Moreover, these cases I have experience of are within major cities - Manchester & Coventry  - I dread to think what the waiting time is, on the Highlands or deepest rural Wales. Has there been a massive reduction in the number of ambulances and/or personnel to staff them in the last decade?

Fundamentally, an ambulance that cannot reliably be on hand & able to assist in less than an hour (and preferably sooner) is not a public service. Its a fiction - a means of not dealing with a problem & lying to the public - where a service should be.

If the government was to make an announcement that the service was to be closed down, then at least people would know that it no-longer existed and they could - possibly, if they wanted to - make arrangements for themselves; I'm sure a market for private emergency medical transportation insurnace would defnitely be of interest to people. And I'd put money on the idea that the quality of service would be better as well - if you've got a contract with (e.g.) Trauma Team PLC - then failure to arrive promptly & provide required medical assistance & any required transport is a breach of contract & they'll be liable to be sued.

This hollowed out public service isn't even a bad joke, requiring people to wait for hours. How callously insulting.