Nye Bevan did not make old bones, and perhaps that’s just as well. According to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, 52 per cent of those polled are dissatisfied with the NHS, in particular with the difficulties in getting a GP appointment, with long A&E trolley waits and with huge delays for hospital appointments. All this, in spite of ever more money being chucked into its maw.

If invited, I could immediately save the NHS a packet by dialling down the thermostat that has turned hospitals into Hotel Tropicana for bacteria, and by asking, wherever possible, patients’ relatives to provide food, thereby reducing the amount of unappetising slop that goes straight from plate to bin while the sick go hungry. But that is not my theme today. My theme is something rather clever invented by NHS thinkers to distract us from our dissatisfaction. Window-dressing.

I, like everyone else who cannot afford private healthcare, must join the 8 a.m. scrum to speak to a receptionist and request an appointment with my GP. Fat chance. But that’s not to say I’m ignored or overlooked. I hear from the practice all the time. Invitations to this, online surveys about that. Would I like to complete a questionnaire about my drinking habits? No, thank you. Unless… might this be a devious way of getting called in for a little chat? How many units a week would that take?

Into my inbox the messages ping: how to calculate my BMI; advice on ‘seasonal’ health; an invitation to a coffee morning if I’m feeling lonely. Nothing wrong with coffee mornings for the lonely. I volunteer at one myself. It’s a simple idea, like being a good neighbour with the possible bonus of cake. I’d praise any GP practice for organising one if they were already getting their day job right. If asking to see a doctor, preferably one who has met you before, were not such a Sisyphean task.

Where once, in waiting rooms, there would have been dog-eared copies of National Geographic, my practice now has TV screens, the more efficiently to numb our brains while we wait. You can watch a short video on handwashing, or an animation about physiotherapy services. It’s a cheap sideshow that might just make you a less impatient patient – or customer, as we’re now called. Very canny. These shiny novelties are a combination of bread and circuses – aimed at keeping the discontented quiet – and a magician’s distraction technique.

A shiny website with a Meet the Team page has photos of doctors you’ll never actually meet

The elusive doctors are concealed behind a bell-and-whistles practice website. It is a thing of wonder, packed with advice. You can spend hours looking at it, and I have. Suffering from a cough or cold? Go to Boots. And – handy hint – if you have toothache, consider seeing a dentist. They might as well tell us to go straight to a hardware store and buy pliers.

I was puzzled to read that consultations with the diabetes nurse and something called the Wellbeing Clinic are currently only available remotely (or was it ‘remotely available’?). Relieved though, to see that the nail-cutting service is still conducted face-to-face, or rather face-to-foot. There’s also a Social Prescribing Clinic where you can explore ‘What Matters Most to You’. Being allowed to see a doctor without being made to feel like a millstone around the NHS’s neck would certainly be on my wishlist.

A shiny website with a Meet the Team page may lure you into a detour, looking at photos of doctors you’ll never actually meet, but eventually pain or anxiety will likely drag you back to the symptoms pages, which include a quick guide to red flags and 111 callback options. Good luck with that.

Remember when your GP would see you in his surgery or even visit you at home? A physician who knew you and your family, wrote notes with a pen and would never fob you off with a Wellbeing Practitioner? It was a very fine system, Nye. But in the 1980s we became customers, so now we’re targeted with glittery, tinselly kidology to stop us noticing that the doctor won’t see us any day soon.

And this just in. I’m invited to Tell Us Your Story – your personal experience of healthcare over the past three years – which they may publish on the website. Or may not. I imagine that the editors are looking for uplifting and grateful stories, not embittered rants.