Why cover the junior doctors’ strike on an economics podcast? After all, we’ve managed to run for a year, 44 episodes, and a six-part mini-series tracing the history of neoliberalism without more than an occasional mention of healthcare. Each week we cover a big economic story and try to give a balanced but alternative take on the issue. The NHS just hasn’t come up all that much.
But as Dr Ben Bouquet, public health registrar and junior doctor, explains this week, few areas of public policy are as intertwined with economic ideology as health.
Despite Treasury and DH announcements, reannouncements and re-reannouncements of billions more in funding (all of which invariably turn out to be different ways of counting the same money), the NHS is mid-way through a decade of relative austerity. At the same time, it has been a playground for successive governments to try out the marketisation of public services under the guise of increasing efficiency.
