Surplus … Debt… What’s the Difference?

This sort of nonsense drives me crazy. Britain’s NHS is jumping and down about how they are running a surplus this year. Except:

NHS trusts have a £4bn backlog of key maintenance repairs which range from fixing heating to meeting fire safety rules, government figures suggest.
The figure is eight times this year’s much-heralded NHS surplus, which was achieved by making a variety of cuts.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said they showed the surplus was a “sham”.

But the Department of Health said repairs come under a different budget, and have no bearing on the surplus.

“Public health budgets, education and training budgets and now the basic maintenance and upkeep of our hospitals have been laundered to produce this surplus.”

A surplus in the NHS is not a good thing. It means you’re providing less in services than the British public is paying for. To use Michael Moore’s analogy, the government is wallowing in evil evil profit. Governments do this kind of accounting fraud creativity all the time. Look up the history of the Gramm-Hollings Balanced Budget Act sometime and the accounting gymnastic the Democratic Congress used to “comply” with the law.

$8 billion in maintenance people. That’s the sort of thing than can get taken care of when you have an evil for-profit healthcare system.

.Originally posted at Right-Thinking