Jatinder Hayre is a junior doctor and academic researcher with an interest in health inequalities and the social determinants of health. He is a campaigner and national spokesperson for Keep Our NHS Public.
Life expectancies have risen for most people across the world. But the gap between how long people live and how long they will live healthily is widening. Poor labor conditions and lack of health care are to blame.
In Britain, healthy life expectancies between poor and rich regions can vary by as many as 20 years. Not only is this a social crisis; it is undermining trust in government and fueling the far right’s cynical politics.
Poor health outcomes are often treated as an unfortunate by-product of individual bad decisions. This moralizing approach ignores the role poverty plays in determining who gets ill and who can afford to get well.
More than a decade of cuts under the Conservatives has left Britain’s National Health Service dangerously understaffed and underfunded. After years of pay cuts, junior doctors are fighting back to protect patients and the NHS.
Some in the Labour Party support using the private sector to bring down NHS waiting lists. But private health care is about putting profit over helping patients — not saving a public health system.