Last night I made an impassioned plea to the Welsh Government to come up with a plan to save our NHS. As a former NHS Consultant it saddens me to see the state of our health services which has been let down by a lack of planning and leadership over the past quarter of a century.
We have the worst waiting times in the UK. Tens of thousands of people are forced to wait years for treatment.
Even if we were to ignore the humanity of it all, ignore the fact that we are forcing people to live with debilitating pain, forcing them to suffer, it makes no sense from a purely economic point of view. The loss of productivity and the impact on our GDP is astronomical.
Its little wonder that Wales, in addition to having the worst waiting times, is also the worst performing economy in the UK.
But we cant ignore the suffering, at least I can't. It sickens me that the NHS which I spent my career working in, has deteriorated to such a degree.
Our NHS is being failed by its leaders and I urge the Government to bring forward a detailed integrated plan to tackle waiting times in the sort, medium and long term.
You can watch the debate in full on Senedd.tv
