The Hospital Con Trick

Do you like horror stories?

Well if you don't, it's bad news for you because you're about to live in one.

Do you know the biggest con trick the government is trying to pull on you at the moment?

The hospital.

Here's why:

Do you know which hospital in the world has the best success rate and safest record?

It is the British Army trauma unit in Afghanistan.

Now I would like to know this: how come doctors operating out of a couple tents in a war zone in a third world country have a better record than we do - and they treat all victims whether friend, foe or just innocent victims of war equally and do so for no charge?

The answer is simple:

They don't have our politicians and our civil servants screwing it up for them.

Now the con trick has the usual two parts:

• First, is the Commitment Effect: they get you to pay a tiny, almost insignificant amount and then ask for a little bit more and you keep paying because you've already paid some money, you would hate to lose it so you keep paying. So it is that we have now spent £20 million or thereabouts and politicians are now saying "Well let's not waste that by stopping" What's wrong with saying "Well we've wasted £20 million plus, why not find out why so we don't waste any more?"
• The second part of the con is to not tell you the full extent of the costs so you get used to to the slow increase. So it was that a standing politician informed us at St Saviour that the actual cost was closer to £800 million when you factor in the cost of the bond. That's a £62.5 million increase for each of the 8 years that we've been talking about it. Now you can be absolutely sure that if they're talking about £800 million now, the real figure is going to be so much more bigger

Here's the horrible truth: the problems we have with the hospital are nothing to do with the building and are everything to do with staff issues and management. They will be the same problems when we have our brand new shiny building.

Do you want to know the truly scary part?

The Red Cross decided that it wasn't right that Jersey had no provisions should an emergency happen here and we needed an emergency hospital like the one the British Army Trauma Unit have. They decided it work cost £75 thousand and have already put the money away. And after spending £800 million and counting, we will be in such a terrible state that we're going to need those tents.