What to do?
A strong government is required who will undertake to break the stranglehold that the unions hold over large swathes of public services. They also need to whip into line the civil servants who seem to see their function not as servants but as champions of their particular department, seeking to increase budgets, headcounts and expenditure as they see those "achievemnets", rather than outcomes, as measures of their success. No government of ay colour in the recent past has set out to do this and none seems likely to do so in the foreseeable future.
As far as the health service goes, it needs to drastically reduce its administrative staff, do away with the ridiculous “Health Trust” organisations (and their associated non-productive staff), impose a sensible GP structure, remove the need for every patient to visit a GP for ailments which clearly the GP will not be able to handle, impose a proper contract with consultants which makes them unavailable for more lucrative work outside the health service, make most hospitals 24/7/365 operations with staff rotas providing appropriate shifts (as, say, the police or fire service does), stop “appointments” for hospitals being made unilaterally for patients who have not asked for treatment and have not been consulted about whether the appointment suits them or not (I have received four of these – all of which I ignored – in the last 18 months). Oh, and lastly, charge foreign visitors the full cost plus 25% profit for all treatment they receive.
That’s just for starters.