'Fast losing its compassion'

Look here upon this story, and on this. Both demonstrate a radical cluelessness about what's wrong with the NHS and how it could be made better. Both in fact demonstrate how far that great bloated monster of an institution has drifted from its proper purpose and business (as have so many other institutions, but the NHS dwarfs them all) - and why is this? Precisely because of endless managerial interference, with the consequent bloating of a self-serving bureaucracy, the never-ending attempt to quantify and rank everything and to reduce it to boxes that can be ticked, targets that can appear to be met. The process itself, in all its ramifications, overwhelms everything - including what used to be meant by professionalism and judgment - and you end up with an NHS which is indeed 'fast losing its compassion' - along with its efficacy and its capacity to do the job it is supposed to do, which is to heal people or, failing that (and every bit as important) make them feel better. One looks back fondly to the old days when GPs understood that their job, as often as not, was to keep the patient entertained while nature effected a cure. Now their patients are in effect being invited to comment on the quality of the entertainment, in a singularly fautous exercise that certainly will not develop an Amazon-style market in the practice of medicine. How could it, as long as medicine is practised by real doctors in real geographical locations - unlike the online virtual market(non)place? 'Feedback' of the kind proposed merely encourages the permanently aggrieved (and idle) and makes no difference to anything - none in the right direction anyway. Still, it gives the scary Ben Bradshaw his moment in the limelight while things are quiet between Christmas and New Year.