IN A strange way I am heartened by the decision by junior doctors to vote somewhat overwhelmingly in favour of the first strike action by medics in the history of the NHS.

So enraged are the medics at Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s proposal to change their terms and conditions that, stating that they are putting patient safety first, some 97 per cent of those who voted agreed to strike action.

As the nation has 37,000 junior doctors and 28,000 of them took part in the poll, this means over three quarters of the medics agree that such dire action is required.

Fair enough. I do not doubt in any way – and neither, I suspect, does the Health Secretary – that junior doctors work incredibly long hours under difficult conditions and would only take such action if they felt their backs were to the wall. To suggest otherwise would be to infer that the doctors would put their own pay and conditions before patients suffering, and this I cannot believe.

Patients will be disadvantaged by the strikes, it is admitted. Operations will be delayed, appointments cancelled, but emergencies will be handled by other staff.

The vote leaves the government’s plans to introduce full weekend cover in the NHS at risk and, as I type this, both sides are digging in.

So why am I heartened? Because at long last we may be seeing the beginning of the final battle that will bring to the fore an unpalatable truth about our sacred NHS: it is a flawed dream that is doomed to failure in its present form.

It’s not that the NHS is broken and in need of repair; it was created with an unrepairable flaw in its mechanism. Put simply, the NHS is founded on the hope, the desire, the wish, the myth that something that is free at the point of service with limited resources can exist with unlimited demand.

That formula dooms the NHS to inevitable breakdown and collapse. If we are lucky we will realise this with plenty of time to bring about radical change before real harm is done to the health of the nation. If we are unlucky the collapse will be slow and painful, the demise long and chaotic as our leaders struggle to patch up and mend the dying patient.

The signs are not good. Both major political parties have reasons not to tamper too far with the NHS. For Labour it is their rallying cry to the troops. Suggest the Tories are out to privatise the NHS and watch the votes flood in. It was also Labour’s invention to admit that it is flawed is to deny their greatest gift to the nation. For the Tories the NHS is a problem they dare not tackle head on, for all the reasons just stated. So ingrained is the NHS myth of the NHS in the public’s mind that even staunch Tory supporters will fight for it to be protected in its present form.

A strike by doctors – once thought unthinkable by the doctors themselves let alone the public – might, just might, hurry along the serious debate that is needed to find a real solution to how to save our NHS.

I do not have all the answers. But I do know that by treating the NHS as some sort of national treasure we simply put off the day of reckoning. Dancing midwives at Danny Boyles’ London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony simply added to the myth-making that surrounds what, we are assured, is the ‘envy of the world,’ Only it is not. There are many countries with far better, far fairer, health services than our own.

The French, the Canadians, the Germans, Singapore, Australia, most of Europe. They all saw what Britain created, admired our spirit and compassion and created their own services in the same fashion of human dignity, but from a different mould. In Germany, for instance, one third of hospital beds in its excellent health service are provided by the private sector.

While many French hospitals are government-run, just under 40 per cent of hospital beds are provided by charities or for-profit companies. France also spends more on healthcare per head than we do. French people and their employers pay for health through national insurance-style contributions. But France also has charges at the point of use that all but the poorest and chronically-ill must pay, such as a fee on GP visits. The majority of people – some 92 per cent – take out extra private coverage with mutual insurers to cover these costs. The French, the Germans and many other nations accept that good health care costs and that everyone should pay their fair share.

The NHS is a marvel. It was the world’s first large-nation universal health care system. It was ahead of its time and of its time. It was never intended to cope with a Britain of 65 million people, many of whom will live well past their eighties with all the ailments and challenges those years bring.

If striking doctors make us sit up and take notice at last then they, and yes Jeremy Hunt, will have done us all a favour.

The problem with national treasures is that we put them in glass cases with ‘do not touch’ on the plinth. It is time we took the case away and replaced the old machinery with a modern mechanism fit for purpose.