The last occasion I spent any time in hospital was two years ago when I had two wisdom teeth extracted. When I visited my local dentist he told me that as the surgery was so urgently needed I wouldn't have long to wait for an appointment. In the end, I waited five months for the operation and spent three days in an overcrowded hospital in east London.
The fact that I could walk into the hospital for an operation without having to pay any money and be looked after for three days is the cornerstone of Britain's National Health Service, which celebrated its 50th birthday yesterday.
The NHS, established in 1948 by the Labour Party, and based on the theories of William Beveridge, was the model for health provision the world over, set up as it was on the principle of free health care for all. When, 50 years later, the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, addressed a conference in London yesterday and announced a wide-reaching modernisation programme to bring the NHS into the next millennium, many people will have been left asking just what happened to Beveridge's dream. Labour's NHS Modernisation Fund is designed to bring new technology and equipment to the service, reduce waiting lists, fund a better quality of training for doctors and nurses and give hospitals and GPs' surgeries a lick of paint. It is the mainstay of a three-year government programme in addition to "sustainable year-on-year increases for the foreseeable future".
However, while the amount of money for the NHS will not be announced until next week, this has not prevented health professionals from making their own estimate of the funding required by the service just to "stand still", which they have put at £10 billion.
One of Mr Blair's key targets is to turn the tide of growing waiting lists. More than any other aspect of the health service, it is the number of people waiting for a bed that is used by political opponents as the benchmark of a government successfully carrying out its policies on health. It was the reform of the health service, as much as Labour's pledges on education, that formed the front line of Mr Blair's attack on the Conservatives during the election campaign last year, but it has not always gone his way in government.
The Health Secretary, Mr Frank Dobson, was forced to admit earlier this year that waiting lists had risen since Labour came to power and with the appointment of the combative Ms Anne Widdecombe as shadow health secretary, the Tories are sending a warning to Labour that Mr Dobson will not be let off the hook lightly.
The belief among many health professionals is that the NHS worked very well until the early 1960s, after which the number of patients grew disproportionately to the funding provided by the government. This, coupled with the dwindling numbers of doctors staying in the NHS, has seriously undermined public confidence in the health service.
Meanwhile, Mr Blair promised that investment in the NHS would come at a price and would be linked to performance. "That price is the change necessary to make money work. It is a contract to renew the NHS: investment for reform; money for modernisation. We will work with you to do it. We will listen. We will consult. We will be open. But change and reform there should be, and no vested interests, no conservative instincts, no reluctance to do things differently should stand in the way . . . "
Ms Widdecombe has warned Britain not to be "fooled" by Mr Blair's sympathetic bedside manner, insisting that the extra money promised by the government is not new but "simply catching-up money. It's a fact, independently verifiable, that at least £8 billion needs to be spent just to match the Conservatives' average increases in health spending during our time in government."
For the Liberal Democrats, its health spokesman, Mr Simon Hughes, has sided with the health professionals in calling on the government to inject between £9 billion and £10 billion into the NHS.
The cost pressures on the NHS, however, remain the same as they were in the 1980s. Low pay for nurses and the cost of new drugs and replacing outdated equipment are issues that will not be resolved without a dramatic input of cash from the government. The NHS Confederation, which represents local health authorities, boards and trusts throughout the UK, said yesterday that it would hold Mr Blair to his promises "not to let the NHS down".