When politicians blame the previous administration you know there's a problem.

When they blame an administration that left office eight years ago, you suspect there could be a crisis.

Yet the Scottish Health Secretary, Shona Robison, on BBC yesterday blamed the "inheritance" from the Labour years for the latest bed blocking problem, despite the fact that we were told only a few years ago that it had supposedly been reduced to zero under the SNP.

And yes, I know we're not supposed to use the term "bed-blocking" for older people (or younger people) being stuck in hospital beds because local authority social care is inadequate or unavailable. But "delayed discharge" sounds too much like a nasty medical condition to me, and "jamming" conjures up images of Bob Marley.

At least bed-blocking makes clear what the problem is: that hospital beds that should be used for people who are ill are being occupied by people who are essentially well and should be elsewhere. No, it's not their fault obviously. No one wants to be stuck in an acute hospital when they could be at home.

But BBC Scotland reported yesterday that, over a four-week period this Christmas, some 1,200 beds a day were unavailable to incoming patients. That's the equivalent of a largish hospital effectively being used as a warehouse for people well enough to live at home or in a care home.

A hospital bed costs the taxpayer around £400 a day, according to the Department of Health, so we're talking here of upwards of £3 million a week. That's serious money. And the bed-blockee doesn't benefit from a penny of it; their health deteriorates the longer they are kept in this institutional purgatory.

This is not good enough. To be fair to Ms Robison, she doesn't attempt to say that it is, though she didn't help herself by trying to blame Jack McConnell. The problem is that a combination of bureaucracy, misallocated funding, reduction in hospital beds and a rapidly ageing population are overwhelming social care services in local authorities.

Older people - any people - cannot be released from hospital unless there is the care available to them. So they remain in the wards and further down the line the result is people being stuck in trolleys in Accident and Emergency. We thought we'd seen the end of that but we haven't.

It doesn't take a genius to work out why the Scottish Government is repeatedly breaking its own laws on waiting times. The lack of bed space means that health boards are unable to meet the 12-week target set by statute for patients awaiting treatment. As The Herald reported yesterday, in recent months thousands of patients have been lingering longer than three months to get their operations.

This has led to calls from the medical establishment for the treatment time targets, introduced by law in 2012, to be abolished. The BMA says that targets distort clinical judgments and can harm patients, and I'm sure it's right. Nevertheless, I await with interest the reaction of Scottish voters if and when Ms Robison announces that the Government is to repeal its own patient guarantee.

The SNP has hoist itself on the petard of the treatment-time target and I'm afraid there it will hang until the problem is sorted out. Much of the success of the SNP in recent years has been on the basis of the smooth running of the National Health Service. And the Government is right to say that things are much better than they were with more than 90 per cent of health board targets being met. However it has to avoid appearing to be either complacent or passing the buck.

But at least everyone can agree that the bed blocking problem is primarily about lack of social care. Many people thought, misguidedly, that the policy of free personal care for the elderly, introduced by the Lib-Lab coalition in 2001, had solved the problem and that delayed discharge was now an English disease; not so. In fact, the bed blocking figures in Scotland are the same as south of the Border.

Free care may have contributed to keeping more older people independent in their homes for longer. It is a humane policy that largely pays for itself, at least in theory. But care is increasingly expensive and the upfront cost has to be paid for by someone.

Most people understand this but dealing with it is another matter. Scottish politics is tribal at the best of times and in the run-up to an election sensible discussion is almost impossible. Labour say that the NHS is simply "not safe in SNP hands". The SNP blame the Labour legacy combined with Westminster cuts.

Local authorities complain about spending constraints and the council tax cap. And it's true that there has been a squeeze in council budgets.(Mind you, it doesn't help when when councils like Edinburgh blow a billion pounds on a vanity project like the trams.)

But polemics aside, it is time to remember that all of Scotland's political parties are on the same side here: they want the NHS to work properly as a publicly provided service. These are important matters and it is right that people are concerned.

That's why The Herald is reopening its Time for Action campaign to try to provide a forum in which these issues can be discussed without degenerating into party political squabbling and tribal rancour.

The matter is of some urgency because of the imminent moves to merge health and social care budgets from April. There needs to be common agreement on matters such as staffing levels, bed numbers, care costs and who does what before this merger begins or else things could very rapidly get out of control.

The merger of health and social care makes clear institutional sense and has been long in the planning. But it could turn into an exercise in bureaucracy, or worse. We have seen this week in Greater Manchester how merging health and social care budgets can rapidly become a party political battle ground with accusations that the NHS is being "broken up".

The thing to bear in mind is that public trust in the NHS is remarkably high in Scotland despite the succession of scandals and shocks from Vale of Leven to Mid Staffs.

The big increases in funding provided by the Barnett Formula in the first decade of the 21st century did a lot to transform a ramshackle and outdated service. Scotland benefited from higher per capita spending and avoided the disruption caused by the wave of market-based reforms south of the Border.

But the good times are probably over for the Scottish NHS. The population is ageing rapidly and the Barnett Formula is being squeezed and reformed. The year-on-year increases cannot be relied upon in future to keep the service ahead of the game. All the more reason to change the terms of play and ensure that we are all on the same side.