How much longer will the NHS be around for?

[Flex Your Head]

Plenty to be concerned about.

http://www.nhsforsale.info/database/impact-database/conflict-of-interest/GOVERNMENT-POLITICIANS.html

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

3 years before completely privatised?

£15 to see your doctor I've heard.

If you have, say, for arguments sake...a heart attack...I should imagine you'll have to produce your credit card before they'll admit you...

Sorry, but what a crock of shite.

Interested to know where you've heard this......

But it wasn't was it - half nay most of the reason the NHS is costing too much is down to the people you defend and the policies that started underThatcher and co to undermine the NHS by bringing in managers and accountants and then private companies to justify privatisation.

Whilst Thatcher was undoubtedly trying to push the NHS down the competition route, the party that actually started with private provision was Labour, now that doesn't mean it is wrong, as if there is a waiting list and the standards are proven to be the same, why not?

So the NHS outsources jobs to the private sector. Why would that mean it is not likely to be around for much longer? This is more about certain people's pathological fears of the private sector than it is about any genuine risk to free healthcare at the point of service.

Happy for this post to be bounced but the NHS is going nowhere, it is far too much of a political 'hot potato'. We may see more private providers for diagnostic tests, which Labour started, we may also see more work devolved to GP practices (where they have a special interest e.g. removal of skin lesions - (which I disagree with unless they are subject to audit)). But the free at point of care for the GB public will remain.

I would imagine (and hope) the health tourist brigade will be charged and discouraged, and would also implement a non-attendance fee for wasted appointments.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Plenty to be concerned about.

http://www.nhsforsale.info/database/impact-database/conflict-of-interest/GOVERNMENT-POLITICIANS.html

Concerned yes, but ultimately the money is being managed by CCGs at a local level and NHS England.

Your earlier post was excellent, re Cameron and the re-organisations, but realistically in your wildest dreams did you not expect a reorganisation when the Tories came to power?

 

[maltaseagull]

The NHS will always be around, thankfully. Private health companies are only interested in healthy wealthy customers.

A very rare common sense post for NSC I have not read anything about a determination by any party to close down the NHS.

 

[beorhthelm]

You really cannot be that stupid - You know dam well the costs to the NHS are being manipulated by using private firms to do work that the NHS could do if properly funded - its being used politically and economically to turn it into a state insurance provider not a state deliverer.

is it? this reads as either late saturday drinken rambling, or paranoia. and in any case what is wrong with a state insurance provider as long as it provides?

A 'company' exists for one reason, and one reason alone: to make a profit. It's as simple as that. Private or PLC, it's all about making money and hitting targets.

and what about Bupa or not for profits and other mutual societies?

 

[Lethargic]

First question is what do people actually think the NHS provides as time goes on it seems to hoover up everything remotely related to healthcare in any shape and form. The simple fact is it cannot continue in its current format without considerable new money so who is willing to pay 60 pence i the pound tax?

The NHS needs to be defined in terms of free services and these remain free to all after that the debate about privatisation can start and as always there is no yes/no answer.

Just glad I am not the one making the decisions.

 

[Stat Brother]

Have a listen to Dr Phil's pre election views of the NHS and funding, all very interesting stuff:-

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/eyeplayer/308

 

[BensGrandad]

I may be in the minority but I phone in the morning and get an appointment with my doctor that day, gauranteed.
When my dentist saw a spot on my tongue and sent me to Royal Surrey in Guildford I was seen diagnosed with mouth cancer within 2 hours and operated on within 12 hours that to me is good, thanks to the NHS the best and most abused service in this country. Long may it continue.

 

[BLOCK F]

Miss Management is she related to Miss Informed? I've seen as much wastage and poor management in privatised industries as there probably is in anything public.

Really?

 

[St Leonards Seagull]

. We may see more private providers for diagnostic tests, which Labour started, we may also see more work devolved to GP practices (where they have a special interest e.g. removal of skin lesions .

This is what worries me the GP service is not coping with the demand for services they provide at present, hence why there is such strain on hospitals as patients who have not received the necessary treatment in the community deteriorate and need to be admitted to hospital.
Surely we need to ensure that the basic services provided are fit for purpose before adding more specialised treatments.

 

[JBizzle]

I agree but I'd be interested to know how much of that demand is bad demand, I.e. people who don't actually need to see a doctor but go for the slightest thing.

 

[BLOCK F]

An awful lot of scaremongering here from some.
The NHS has been around for about 67 years and will continue to be around for quite some time yet.
There surely cannot be any disagreement that it will have to change though.Life has changed over the last 67 years and so too will the NHS.
We all know that people are living longer now and that alone, is placing enormous strain on the system. Intelligent people must see that the NHS, without some kind of reform, will become unsustainable,in due course.The answer cannot simply be to throw increasing amounts of cash around without changes.
What form those changes take and how future healthcare is funded is,of course, a huge question and one that I would like to see be tackled in a non political manner........if possible!
Those on the left who believe that the Tory Party want to destroy the NHS really ought to consider that even wicked Conservatives get ill too!
I speak as one whose father is a retired GP of 98,my mother was a nurse during the war and now requires constant attention at home as she has dementia(My dad remains her main carer!)My late uncle was a consultant Cardio-Thoracic surgeon and my aunt was also a doctor.My paternal grandmother was a nurse who qualified in 1909.
I care about the health service and I vote Tory!

 

[Trevor]

I think it will certainly be around for a very long time as it is still a much-loved British institution. Very important that we don't change the model though. Many surveys have it as one of the best health systems in the western world (WHO / Commonwealth Fund to name two). We come out very well in terms of value for money (per capita) and access to all. Some improvments needed in terms of outcomes

 

[Soulman]

I doubt it will fully go

Labour and its scaremongering low tactics think it will.

IN Ed Miliband’s bid to “weaponise” the NHS, Labour hit a shocking new low with one of its attack posters.
“Next time, they’ll cut to the bone,” says the slogan over a giant x-ray of a broken leg. Unveiled by Ed Balls and Labour health spokesman Andy Burnham in Harlow, the poster – launched by Labour at the start of the campaign – concludes: “The NHS can’t afford the Tory cuts.”

One Eye reader, a consultant children’s orthopaedic surgeon, was aghast. Accustomed to identifying “the type of injury inflicted on a battered child”, he tells the Eye the poster uses “a radiograph showing a child’s leg that has suffered at least two and probably three fractures that are at different stages of healing. Viewing this, any doctor working in the field will be chilled to the bone, this being an injury pattern most often caused by systematic child abuse (does anyone remember Baby P?)”

Injury pattern
The surgeon, who asks not to be identified, was so concerned he set out to establish the provenance of the x-ray “as I hope the injury pattern was recognised. As a doctor I now need to know that the child has been appropriately cared for, or if not report my concerns to child protection services, assuming this is a contemporaneous film of a patient in the UK.”
Later, having got through to someone at Labour party HQ on the telephone, he was assured the image was unlikely to be a current x-ray and was told, variously, that the poster “may be a mock-up” and that in any case would have been “checked by hundreds of people”. So that’s all right then. Compassionate Ed wouldn’t want to weaponise the image of a child whose most prominent injury, the surgeon says, is consistent with having been stamped upon.
“The voice on the phone did not think to ask who I was, even after I explained my concerns, so clearly had no intention of following up. I suspect they really don’t care,” says the surgeon, who was considering voting Labour, but no more. “Were they ignorant or are they just heartless? Either way, I don’t want them running our health service as what is required at every level is to care.”
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/news

 

[crookie]

You could double the NHS budget and it would still demand more. Quite simply it has morphed way beyond what it was founded for, and along with an aging population it is unsustainable in it's current form. Can we really afford, with a huge budget deficit, for the NHS to be providing lifestyle services such as cosmetic surgery, sex-change operations, gastric bands, as well as funding foreign patients who have paid nothing into the system. When we go abroad we have to get private insurance to cover us, how can it be fair that anyone can come here and use the service for free ? What is so shocking about a £10 charge for visiting your GP ? It might ease some of the pressure on GP's by dissuading all these hypochondriacs from clogging up the system. Go into any surgery and they have a poster on the wall stating how many £thousands have been wasted in the past month due to missed appointments, multiply that by every surgery !! If we aren't charging for appointments, surely we should at least charge for missed appointments ?

 

[Chicken Runner61]

Sorry, but what a crock of shite.

Interested to know where you've heard this......



Whilst Thatcher was undoubtedly trying to push the NHS down the competition route, the party that actually started with private provision was Labour, now that doesn't mean it is wrong, as if there is a waiting list and the standards are proven to be the same, why not?




Happy for this post to be bounced but the NHS is going nowhere, it is far too much of a political 'hot potato'. We may see more private providers for diagnostic tests, which Labour started, we may also see more work devolved to GP practices (where they have a special interest e.g. removal of skin lesions - (which I disagree with unless they are subject to audit)). But the free at point of care for the GB public will remain.

I would imagine (and hope) the health tourist brigade will be charged and discouraged, and would also implement a non-attendance fee for wasted appointments.

The £15 came from a Tory, a friend but none the less a tory who knows more about the way they want the NHS to go than you and I want it to. Already the NHS has some privatised sectors, its paying private companies to do the work its been starved of the resources to do itself. The budgets the tory installed managers set are often breeched and the NHS pays a fine every time they miss their targets. Thats why in A&E people are left in Ambulances for busy periods because and they will be fined if they are not dealt within there are not enough beds. The only free point will be an initial assessment to see whats wrong with you and to check if you have the money or insurance to pay for the quality of treatment you will be given. So the next step is to firstly split a few things that will only be covered by medical insurance or private care, split out other areas that will be dealt with by private hospitals but funded by the NHS. That will only leave A&E and minor treatments as the free bit and then after a while announce that the NHS has collapsed so might as well be completely privatised.

What you have to realise is that the NHS is being run down slowly so it reaches the point where it has to fail and has to fall to privatisation .

Its what they did with council services and utilities why should it be any different.

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

You could double the NHS budget and it would still demand more. Quite simply it has morphed way beyond what it was founded for, and along with an aging population it is unsustainable in it's current form. Can we really afford, with a huge budget deficit, for the NHS to be providing lifestyle services such as cosmetic surgery, sex-change operations, gastric bands, as well as funding foreign patients who have paid nothing into the system. When we go abroad we have to get private insurance to cover us, how can it be fair that anyone can come here and use the service for free ? What is so shocking about a £10 charge for visiting your GP ? It might ease some of the pressure on GP's by dissuading all these hypochondriacs from clogging up the system. Go into any surgery and they have a poster on the wall stating how many £thousands have been wasted in the past month due to missed appointments, multiply that by every surgery !! If we aren't charging for appointments, surely we should at least charge for missed appointments ?

A little caveat if all those who missed their appointments actually made them would that lead to longer delays or less appointments being offered.

 

[Hampster Gull]

An awful lot of scaremongering here from some.
The NHS has been around for about 67 years and will continue to be around for quite some time yet.
There surely cannot be any disagreement that it will have to change though.Life has changed over the last 67 years and so too will the NHS.
We all know that people are living longer now and that alone, is placing enormous strain on the system. Intelligent people must see that the NHS, without some kind of reform, will become unsustainable,in due course.The answer cannot simply be to throw increasing amounts of cash around without changes.
What form those changes take and how future healthcare is funded is,of course, a huge question and one that I would like to see be tackled in a non political manner........if possible!
Those on the left who believe that the Tory Party want to destroy the NHS really ought to consider that even wicked Conservatives get ill too!
I speak as one whose father is a retired GP of 98,my mother was a nurse during the war and now requires constant attention at home as she has dementia(My dad remains her main carer!)My late uncle was a consultant Cardio-Thoracic surgeon and my aunt was also a doctor.My paternal grandmother was a nurse who qualified in 1909.
I care about the health service and I vote Tory!

Good post

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

is it? this reads as either late saturday drinken rambling, or paranoia. and in any case what is wrong with a state insurance provider as long as it provides?



and what about Bupa or not for profits and other mutual societies?

What some people don't understand or rather don't want to understand is a company can make a profit doing tasks that within the public sector would cost more. The inefficiency in the public service is so bad a private company would save millions if it were to take it over and make a healthy profit.

 

[RexCathedra]

What you have to realise is that the NHS is being run down slowly so it reaches the point where it has to fail and has to fall to privatisation

Cheshire-cat privatization. There will always be something called 'the NHS'...

The UK status quo isn't perfect, but it delivers better-than-OECD average outcomes at less-than-OECD average expenditures.
To mess with something that does that -- we can't even get close -- you need a compelling reason to do so. Grand theories of political economy don't count.

I've spent a lifetime - well, since 1984, anyways -- in US retail politics fighting to replace what we've got.
Even after our recent changes -- which hang by a thread -- it's still inferior in many ways, and vastly inferior in some, to the model rolled out in 1948 in the UK.
If it ain't broke, fix it where it needs it. Broken gets thrown out.
And fix it without making a relative handful rich in the process.