Zoë chats with Ben Rubin about the UK NHS health system

Part 1

Show Notes:

Ben Rubin was born in East Anglia in 1981. He graduated from the University of Leeds.

Ben has had a very successful career in the consulting industry, where he has spent 18 years helping leaders of complex organisations to effect change. During this time, Ben realised that much of the Western system is fundamentally corrupt and needs to be replaced.

Ben is also a trustee of the Public Health Collaboration – an organisation that we both know well and have worked with over time.

I heard Ben on the Delingpole podcast in April 2023 and was struck by this comment “The NHS is the most complicated organisation on earth and I've looked at many. By some distance." Ben did note “there are pockets of excellence.”

This was the first time a Diet & Health Today podcast has been two hours long! There was so much that Ben and I wanted to talk about.

The first hour explored the NHS, Ben’s personal connections with the NHS, why it’s so complex, the costs, how the NHS should be designed (human centred) and how it is designed (layer upon layer of tech projects and upgrades). We discussed the impact of Covid on the NHS and the medic ‘contract’ (Ben has a very interesting view of what the legacy of this might be). We also explored preventing sickness, creeping privatisation, politicisation of healthcare and how the church showed pockets of leadership during recent times.  In the second hour, we explore world systems in general, the ‘big thinker’ connections that Ben makes, unelected organisations and the roles that they are trying to play in our lives.

You can read more of Ben's work over at Substack