4 things that suggest David Cameron doesn't really love the NHS that much

Don't let the Prime Minister's smokescreen of praise for our health service fool you

David and Samantha Cameron talking to a patient at Salford Royal Hospital (AFP)

“Of course we all love the NHS,” Nick Clegg said with a sigh last night, after torrents of meaningless pro-NHS rhetoric. And he had a point. Apparently, it's impossible to talk about the NHS without first asserting just how much you love it.

Perhaps most loved up was David Cameron, who gazed into the camera and asserted that the NHS and its staff are “incredible… important… unbelievable.” However, for a man who has so much praise for our service, he has a funny way of showing it. Here are the five things that the Prime Minister should probably think about next time he tries to heap praise on the NHS:

1. We're reaching breaking point

"NHS and social care services are at breaking point. It cannot go on," wrote NHS chiefs in an open letter to the party leaders last year. Despite their pro-NHS rhetoric, the coalition forced the institution to find £20bn in savings as real-term NHS spending decreased.

Over 10,000 jobs were quietly lost and a third of walk-in centres were shut down or downgraded. As a result, according to the Royal College of General Practitioners, people will be turned away from their GPs and nurses over 50m times throughout 2015.

2. Cuts are driving people to A&E

Anyone who tells you that cutting the social care budget or the welfare budget benefits the NHS is wrong,” said Nicola Sturgeon last night. As the coalition slashed £1.8bn from adult social care council funding, over 100,000 extra over-90s per year arrived at A&E, putting an impossible strain on resources already stretched to breaking point.

3. The link between privatisation and self-interest

According to campaigners, no less than 65 Tory peers and donors hold significant stakes in pharmaceutical companies, private health service providers and private health insurers, and stand to gain a huge amount of money from the privatisation of the NHS.

Documents leaked last month reveal that the Tories are putting £1.2bn of cancer and end-of-life care contracts up for grabs in their biggest NHS privatisation to date. Cameron said he wants to protect the NHS for “everyone in our economy”, but NHS funding is flowing away from the sick and disabled and into the private coffers of the businesses which bankroll his party.

4. People are dying for no reason

In 2012, over 10,000 sick and disabled people died within six weeks of their benefits claim being brought to an end. The Conservatives' plans to take £1bn away from the disabled and £1.5bn away from their carers will only increase the burden on the NHS – though some of those hit by these cuts may never make it to hospital at all.

The Conservative’s programme of benefit sanctions has already been linked by campaigners to multiple deaths by suicide and starvation. After he was stripped of his benefits, the ex-soldier David Clapson couldn't afford the electricity he needed to keep his diabetes medicine fit for use. He died starving and alone.