![\"Composite](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/240\/cpsprodpb\/9732\/production\/_130260783_swlk_comp_0107.jpg.webp)
<\/picture><\/span>BBC\/PA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThe British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n According to researchers at the King’s Fund, the public gave the NHS its worst rating since records began 40 years ago. Just 29% said they were satisfied with the NHS in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And yet we still love it. A whopping 90% of the public agrees the service should be free and available to everyone. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But with more than seven million people on waiting lists, almost everyone knows someone who isn’t getting the care they need. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the NHS approaches its 75th anniversary, politicians are falling over themselves to praise the service. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But when the cameras aren’t rolling, the message you hear can be a very different one. Just like us, politicians have a love-hate relationship with the NHS. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n “The whole system is paralysed and not improving – all the progress is going backwards.” That’s not the kind of thing you’re likely to hear a minister say in public but it is the candid verdict of a former health minister talking privately. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They say the NHS chief executive has become the “rationer-in-chief” tasked with “spreading the jam more and more thinly” as the demand for care races ahead of what’s available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Another Conservative former minister tells me the “National Health Service is an oxymoron”, a contradiction, because “the leadership is incredibly patchy and outcomes are mixed”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For Labour, a source says there is increasing “anxiety and jeopardy” about the future of the service and “it really is a case of change or die”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You’d be hard pressed to find a politician who would admit that services are being rationed but in off-the-record conversations that word comes up again and again. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n