Discuss the view that the National Health Service treats sickness rather than promoting health.

This essay shall provide a brief discussion into the role and action of the National Health Service (NHS) within British society today. It shall formulate an analysis into how it serves and treats its clients hoping to show the ways its deals with both sickness and health as concepts relating to patient care and aftercare.
Established in 1948 post world war Britain, the NHS was formulated as a service which would be free and open to the whole of the British populace. It offered a service by which
“The stated principle underlying its founding was that access to health care should depend on medical need rather than ability to pay.” (Giddens 1989:593)
Aiming to maintain a strong and healthy workforce the NHS provided a formulised and structured provision of health care whose ultimate aim can be seen as treating sickness in order to maintain a level of health within society.
Talcott Parsons, The Social System (1952) in his seminal functionalist study of the health service as a social institution provides an important view of the social process involved in distributing medical care.
Parsons argued that the medical sector worked towards maintaining health as this would result in a fully functioning workforce and ultimately a productive society. Importantly Parsons described illness as a social state alongside a feeling of illness and was gauged by the reaction of others to it. According to Parsons once successfully labelled as ill by the medical profession, the patient would resign from normal social duties and would hand the responsibility of their welfare over to others. At this point illness is now treated however it is not the role of the health service to promote health only to provide it through the eradication of illness.
If we step away from the practice which is discussed by Parson in his sick role theory, and ask at which point health should be promoted in an interaction between the individual and the health service, in the case of Britain and the NHS, we can see that at any point the medical profession must place judgement upon lifestyle factors which may be deemed unwise and placing the patient in danger, i.e. smoking, eating fatty foods, and binge drinking. However for Parsons such a process would encourage discrimination and ultimately an opportunity for the opinion of the practitioner to influence treatment of a patient.
“The ideology of the profession lays great emphasis on the obligation of the physician to put the “welfare of his patient” above his personal interests”
(Parsons 1952:435)
However this idealistic stance on the NHS or indeed any health care provider Parsons denotes is not a realistic interpretation of the NHS in the 21st century. The gradual introduction of corporate practices and practitioners throughout the end of the 20th century has resulted in a NHS based around financial concerns over those of patient care and overall health of the nation. Here it is possible to see the gap between the treatment of sickness and the promotion of health; financially it would not be viable to provide a service which monitored or gauged health, instead only at the point of diagnosed illness is care provided.
We can now assert that the NHS does strive to cure illness and treat the sick members of society, however for the purpose of this essay it is important to try and asses the promotion of health by the NHS. Health as a social concept like sickness is best contextualised by Payne & Payne:
“The existence of social institutions to combat illness – being ill is an undesirable problem where as being fit is not- means there is a strong normative tendency to talk more about illness, leaving health to be a residual category implicitly defined as a lack of illness.” (Payne, J & Payne, G 2000:204)
From the above definition it can be seen that the view of health is primarily something which would be seen to not require medical attention.
However this does appear to be changing through recent trends in health promotion by governmental agencies such as the ministry for health. Campaigns for physical and mental wellbeing are now becoming commonplace alongside concerns over educating society on the benefits of healthy eating, i.e. Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA’s), and the Traffic Light Guideline Daily Amount information placed on food packaging (January 2007).
To conclude upon this brief outline into the arenas of discussion concerning such complex issues of the treatment of sickness and health by the NHS it can be seen that as a feature of the NHS sickness takes preference in the minds of NHS care givers. This can be understood due to the urgency of treating sick people in opposition to maintaining a lengthier programme of health promotion.
The view of health as the absence of illness seems to also affect its treatment, a patient who appears healthy provides few demands upon the NHS.
But as discussed, recent trends of heightened awareness into a healthier lifestyle seem to be reflected in the governmental promotion of health and national campaigns which aim to educate the British public. Through the NHS, promotion of health provided by NHS practitioners can be witnessed in the prevalence of ‘medical opinions’ and open condemnation of poor health practices i.e. smoking or a poor diet, which although not overtly high profile it provides an opportunity by which a patient may obtain information and guidance on how to conduct a healthier lifestyle.