I'm not sure this is ever that much use, but then, on the other hand, I like to catastrophize as a strategy for moving forward.
I think when I was younger, I was inherently anxious; that would certainly be something that I would have inherited from my mum.
I had to find strategies to deal with that, and I think I did, on balance, pretty well.
One of the things I did was to go to the worst-case scenario to see whether I could have whether I could manage it, whether I could handle it, and whether I could deal with it.
My rationale was always if I could deal with the worst, then anything better than that was a bonus (a pessimist is never disappointed).
I had a chance conversation with someone who's quite high up in NHS medicine recently.
As we were chatting in this serendipitous meeting, they explained to me quite casually that it was their belief that the NHS would be bankrupt by the end of this parliament.
Have a wee think about that.
If you keep up with the news, you'll understand that the news is dark; you'll understand that we owe a lot of money as a country, and that's getting harder to pay.
You'll understand that the current philosophy towards what we do with that debt is just to add on to it, and that there is an end to that, and the end is not great.
The hard thing is that our political system now doesn't seem to be able to make the decisions it has to make to make the difference it has to make.
We certainly will not be able to pay for the things we have to pay for just out of taxation; we will have to find other ways to pay.
I'm not political, never have been, do not have a political colour, but it's clear to see that we're heading down a road, and it's going to be hard to turn around.
As I explore that in my own worst-case scenarios, the following scenarios arise.
Number 1. Maybe people will not be able to pay or will not want to pay for private dentistry anymore (totally feasible and possible).
Number 2. The NHS may well become bankrupt, and we may have to spend more on defence (we might have to go to war)
Number 3. If we have to spend 2 times as much on defence, we might have to spend 50% as much on health.
Number 4. If that happens, how much of that half as much will we spend on dentistry?
By stealth, we've already reached a situation where 42% of adults in the United Kingdom have active tooth decay (adult dental health survey figures). If that is in fact the case, we are not at the bottom of the barrel yet.
Over 6 years ago, on the 11th of March 2020, when we had our open day in the practice, my then bank manager Ian came to me in treatment room 6 when no one else was around and said to me, “You realise, Colin, that in a crisis cash is king”.
I had no cash then; I was broke. We felt the full weight of what a crisis can look like when you have no reserves.
For all of us in life, in work, in finances. We need to have ‘something in the bank’; the worst-case scenario is always a scenario, even if you only get close to worst case, it's still bad enough.
Best to mend the roof while the sun is shining.
Blog Post Number - 4568
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