Many stories about medical services over the past few years have portrayed nurses as angels and doctors as living saints.

Soap Opera is a useful provider of this story. Perhaps most famous is George Clooney as the charismatic Dr. Ross of the long-standing American medical drama ER.

Despite their similar names, Dr. Ross is very different from Dr. Rolf, a mappet character who repeatedly participates in sketching. At the Veterinary Hospital, a group of animals operate on patients weekly. They never found a cure, and the consequences were often disastrous.

In reality, the NHS is a mixture of Dr. Ross and Dr. Rolf, with sometimes tragic consequences. Recent scandals at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trusts are a tragic example of the latter. A major review found that hospital mistakes could result in stillbirths, postnatal deaths, and severe brain damage. The family was torn. A similar report was made last year at a hospital in Nottingham, where more than 60 babies were seriously ignored with similar results.

This is not to deny the value of the NHS, but to insert a well-balanced story that is often overkill with heroic or negligent accusations. There is always a mixture.

An important part of economic theory accurately depicts this more realistic picture of the NHS staff, as well as the more general public sector.

James Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his work in the development of so-called “public choice”. It rejects the idea that public sector bureaucrats act in an indifferent and objective way. They are as selfish as our others. Their main motive is not to serve the people, but to promote their interests and the interests of the bureaucrats to which they belong.

Based in Swansea, DVLA is a notorious example of the huge backlog of license renewals. Most of the institution’s 6,200 staff returned home during the initial blockade, of which 3,400 were on paid special leave without working at all.

No one has been sanctioned for this, and the CEO is firmly in place.

In a similar fashion, the Public Health Service (PHE) was so inefficient that it had to be closed and rebranded as the Public Health and Safety Department.

Its Chief Executive Officer, Jenny Harries, has built a career as a regional director of PHE. During the pandemic, as Deputy Chief Clinic, she was responsible for a UK-like statement that had a “completely sufficient supply” of personal protective equipment.

Teaching unions also fails during the pandemic, and sometimes their main purpose is to ensure that teachers are required to do as little work as possible while paying the full amount. Impressed.

Of course, examples of self-inquiry and incompetent behavior can be found in both private sector managers and workers.

But this is the point of public choice theory. Nothing is as good in nature as we would like to believe in the public sector.

For many, the coverage of the baby’s death was so scandalous, as it was often in the hands of services beyond blame. Perhaps the scales are finally starting to fall from our eyes.