Sorry ldopas - you will think this is just tory bashing.......................
http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/dec/19/ambulance-service-crew-restart-your-heart-exhausted
Essential service not an emergency service?
£19,500 p.a ?
It's what "the market" demands though isn't it and "the market" is always right 
The market isn't always right, but it is sometimes. The public sector isn't always right but it is sometimes.
In the end the issue that grinds my gears if everyone including politicians and some here (sorry!) using the NHS to pound out their political views.
I like facts, I find them useful in business for example. Facts (NHS figures) tell us that rather than the NHS disappearing as some here allude to, funding has gone from £63 billion to a bone staggering £117 billion in the last decade.
NHS being "privatised"? Really. Well NHS public private initiative are at around 7% (and by the way 5% of that was under Labour). We have 32,467 additional doctors compared to 10 years ago. The number has increased by an annual average of 2.5 per cent over that time. Nurse number has increased by an annual average of 0.5 per cent over that period.
You put "£19,500pa?". Is that enough or too much? Who knows? Its a how long is a piece of string question. Some footballers earn that in a couple of hours. And if we say, yeah lets pay them £60k, what then do we pay a surgeon each year; £10 million? Where will we fund that from?
These are questions that will be never wrong or right. So NHS facts, not mine, tell us we are exponentially putting more money in. Perhaps we need to look at overuse of the NHS by people, missed appointments that someone has also put here, treatments that should not be on the NHS, increasing influx and increase of population and many other factors.
Truth is, like you I love the NHS makes me proud to be British, but personally I don't think there will ever be a time where NHS response to ever increasing demand will map together. I also don't think there will be a day where people do not use it as a political football when cold hard facts, not just emotion and political bias (right and left) are used to look at the correct rebalance of needs and wants. Sad but true!
