After covid, politicians are failing us again over the energy crisis

ABSTRACT

kabbasi@bmj.com 
Follow Kamran on Twitter @KamranAbbasi With “biblical” floods affecting tens of millions of people in Pakistan, and a cost of energy crisis that threatens the health and wellbeing of millions of children and elderly people in the UK alone (doi10.1136/bmj.o2113),1 there are only four certainties death, taxes, a worsening climate emergency, and the relentless growth in energy companies’ profits. A new investigation by The BMJ finds that hospitals in the UK are predicting that they will be forced to cut patients’ services to pay their “eye watering” energy bills this winter (doi10.1136/bmj.o2088).2 Inevitably, the commitment of staff will be relied on to keep the health service going, but how much is left in the well of goodwill? Besides workload pressures, NHS consultants remain aggrieved over pay and pensions (doi10.1136/bmj.o2073),3 while GPs are losing the sense of “specialness” that attracted them to primary care (doi10.1136/bmj.o2002).4 It may be worth remembering how August 2022 feels, because a politician or a commentator may tell you in a year or two that the NHS and energy crises were figments of our imaginations, that the public or experts panicked and foisted disastrous policies on politicians. [...]with the prospect of a catastrophic winter ahead, amid dire warnings of a humanitarian crisis from the NHS Confederation and Michael Marmot, to name but two (doi10.1136/bmj.o2113, doi10.1136/bmj.o2088, doi10.1136/bmj.o2129),1213 the sense that the politicians of the day and their supporters haven’t grasped the depth of crisis we are facing—or that if they do grasp it they have chosen not to help the people most in need—means that the public and health workers must be ready to be failed again. 1 Mahase E. Doctors warn of “significant humanitarian crisis” as half of UK households face fuel poverty.