[Misc] UK healthcare/NHS funding

[The Clamp]

My wifes Brother worked for the NHS at the Sussex as a procurement manager brought in to cut costs at £800 a day. The waste in the NHS is big. One dept paid £1.99 for a pair of surgical gloves whilst another dept using a different supplier were paying £5.99. It took him 12 months to change them to the same cheaper supplier because the head of dept was good friends with the suppliers.
Also he was told any money saved would be reinvested to employ more nurses. He made a yearly saving of 8M. Guess what no new nurses were taken on and the money wasted elsewhere.
He also advised they were top heavy with managers and admin who outnumbered nurses by 10 to 1, no action was taken

It certainly needs shaping up.
I believe the Tory tactic is to render it unfit for purpose and sell it off to “fix the problems”. When I say I believe it’s the Tory tactic I of course mean, it is the Tory tactic.

 

[beorhthelm]

My wifes Brother worked for the NHS at the Sussex as a procurement manager brought in to cut costs. He was paid £800 a day. The waste in the NHS is big. One dept paid £1.99 for a pair of surgical gloves whilst another dept using a different supplier were paying £5.99. It took him 12 months to change them to the same cheaper supplier because the head of dept was good friends with the suppliers.
Also he was told any money saved would be reinvested to employ more nurses. He made a yearly saving of 8M. Guess what no new nurses were taken on and the money wasted elsewhere.
He also advised they were top heavy with managers and admin who outnumbered nurses by 10 to 1, no action was taken

thats cant be right, we're told theres no waste and every problem is due to tory policy to run down the service. or maybe they hire tory friendly managers to engineer this state of affairs?

 

[Bob!]

My wifes Brother worked for the NHS at the Sussex as a procurement manager brought in to cut costs. He was paid £800 a day. The waste in the NHS is big. One dept paid £1.99 for a pair of surgical gloves whilst another dept using a different supplier were paying £5.99. It took him 12 months to change them to the same cheaper supplier because the head of dept was good friends with the suppliers.
Also he was told any money saved would be reinvested to employ more nurses. He made a yearly saving of 8M. Guess what no new nurses were taken on and the money wasted elsewhere.
He also advised they were top heavy with managers and admin who outnumbered nurses by 10 to 1, no action was taken

https://fullfact.org/news/two-manag...ile the number of,11,000 are 'senior managers'.

However while the number of non-clinical full time equivalent staff - some 475,000 - outnumber nurses (though far from being double), only 23,000 are managers and 11,000 are 'senior managers'.

So there are actually eight or nine times as many nurses as there are managers in the NHS (and similar is true if you count heads rather than full time equivalents).

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

It won’t go to the NHS or social care.

Here’s a few ways the Tory’s could find the NHS without ripping off the working man;

Off the top of my head..

Stop deliberately under funding the NHS
Pay Decent wages for frontline staff and cut wages of top tier admin staff, so the operation is more efficient.
Go after the people who defrauded us during the pandemic
Raise taxes for wealthier people
Chase taxes from corporations getting a free ride in the U.K.
Insist MP’s invest their wealth in the U.K. and not in Russia and the Middle East.

Absolutely all of this.

On the BBC South politics programme on Sunday morning, the Tory MP Flick Drummond said something along the lines of “we have to protect the Hard-pressed taxpayer.” If I’d been there I would have asked “why?” Obviously we have the cost of living crisis at the moment and so certainly wouldn’t want to hit basic rate taxpayers, but loads of people made loads of money out of the pandemic, the energy companies are raking it in. Windfall tax? Increasing the higher levels of income tax? Rishi Sunak could afford to pay more. Rishi Sunak could afford to pay more. …… I could go on.

Edit: I meant to say “Jacob Rees-Mogg could afford to pay more…..”

 

[portslade seagull]

It certainly needs shaping up.
I believe the Tory tactic is to render it unfit for purpose and sell it off to “fix the problems”. When I say I believe it’s the Tory tactic I of course mean, it is the Tory tactic.

Who in their right mind would want to buy it. Just cannot see it as a private entity. There would have to be a percentage of free access which would put off potential investors unless the government in charge still put billions into it to cover this

 

[The Clamp]

Who in their right mind would want to buy it. Just cannot see it as a private entity. There would have to be a percentage of free access which would put off potential investors unless the government in charge still put billions into it to cover this

It’s a good point.

What the government have tried so far are things like outsourcing restocking and ambulance cleaning to the lowest bidder. It used to be done by the paramedics themselves. Who needs to be paid more to stay and do it themselves. The contractors were rubbish and ambulance crews still had to do it themselves anyway as they found so many things lacking. Except now they don’t get paid for it.


The US do have free health care for the ultra-poor. It’s terrible but it exists. That’s the way the U.K. will likely go.

However, it’s not the A&E and GP sectors that private parties are particularly interested in. It’s the pharma sector that is the lure.

With so many medications now out of patent in the U.S and antibiotics becoming more obsolete by the year, they need revenue. The NHS prescriptions is a huge closed market that US pharma desperately want to break into.
So instead of your say, £18 prescription (if you are eligible to pay, millions don’t have to pay) for codeine, you’ll be paying £20 a tablet.

I really do see it going that way. I think it will stay free for the poorest but they’ll target the workers. Low to medium incomes is the group the Tory’s traditionally target. They’ll probably also narrow the definition of “poorest”.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Who in their right mind would want to buy it. Just cannot see it as a private entity. There would have to be a percentage of free access which would put off potential investors unless the government in charge still put billions into it to cover this

If you believe what you read in Private Eye (and I have no reason not to believe it), all the private health- care providers in the country have been struggling financially, but are now laughing all the way to the bank because they have been paid to keep their facilities available for the NHS if needed during the Pandemic, and that provision has not been majorly called upon. They’ve been paying big dividends,

But the point being they don’t normally make money out of health……

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

My wifes Brother worked for the NHS at the Sussex as a procurement manager brought in to cut costs. He was paid £800 a day. The waste in the NHS is big. One dept paid £1.99 for a pair of surgical gloves whilst another dept using a different supplier were paying £5.99. It took him 12 months to change them to the same cheaper supplier because the head of dept was good friends with the suppliers.
Also he was told any money saved would be reinvested to employ more nurses. He made a yearly saving of 8M. Guess what no new nurses were taken on and the money wasted elsewhere.
He also advised they were top heavy with managers and admin who outnumbered nurses by 10 to 1, no action was taken

Im sorry but I don’t believe this. Managers and admin, 10 to 1, sounds like bull shit to me.

Edit: I see someone else has called you out on this.

 

[studio150]

Rishi Sunak could afford to pay more. Rishi Sunak could afford to pay more. …… I could go on.

In fact Mrs Sunak rather than avoiding tax through non-dom status could start fully paying UK tax.

 

[beorhthelm]

If you believe what you read in Private Eye (and I have no reason not to believe it), all the private health- care providers in the country have been struggling financially, but are now laughing all the way to the bank because they have been paid to keep their facilities available for the NHS if needed during the Pandemic, and that provision has not been majorly called upon. They’ve been paying big dividends,

But the point being they don’t normally make money out of health……

much of the private health providers in UK are mutuals and not-for-profits. payments for block booking wards were wasted by managers in healthcare refusing to use them. they were certainly needed and Private Eye might want to look at why they weren't.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

It’s a good point.

What the government have tried so far are things like outsourcing restocking and ambulance cleaning to the lowest bidder. It used to be done by the paramedics themselves. Who needs to be paid more to stay and do it themselves. The contractors were rubbish and ambulance crews still had to do it themselves anyway as they found so many things lacking. Except now they don’t get paid for it.


The US do have free health care for the ultra-poor. It’s terrible but it exists. That’s the way the U.K. will likely go.

However, it’s not the A&E and GP sectors that private parties are particularly interested in. It’s the pharma sector that is the lure.

With so many medications now out of patent in the U.S and antibiotics becoming more obsolete by the year, they need revenue. The NHS prescriptions is a huge closed market that US pharma desperately want to break into.
So instead of your say, £18 prescription (if you are eligible to pay, millions don’t have to pay) for codeine, you’ll be paying £20 a tablet.

I really do see it going that way. I think it will stay free for the poorest but they’ll target the workers. Low to medium incomes is the group the Tory’s traditionally target. They’ll probably also narrow the definition of “poorest”.

The European healthcare system seems to make sense, a mixture of both private and public health care.

You can be a fan of the idea of the NHS and see it’s not fit for purpose at the moment, we plough so much money into it and the problems never seem to be fixed.

 

[The Clamp]

The European healthcare system seems to make sense, a mixture of both private and public health care.

You can be a fan of the idea of the NHS and see it’s not fit for purpose at the moment, we plough so much money into it and the problems never seem to be fixed.

I agree.

I did hear a radio program a while back which made the argument that largely the NHS is actually very well run considering the size of the organisation.

But I’m of the view that there are many areas that need overhauling. We do put a lot of money in but that is relative to the size of the entity. We don’t put anywhere near enough money into the right areas (frontline wages).

I don’t know much about the European healthcare system. I shall look into that. Cheers.

 

[drew]

My wifes Brother worked for the NHS at the Sussex as a procurement manager brought in to cut costs. He was paid £800 a day. The waste in the NHS is big. One dept paid £1.99 for a pair of surgical gloves whilst another dept using a different supplier were paying £5.99. It took him 12 months to change them to the same cheaper supplier because the head of dept was good friends with the suppliers.
Also he was told any money saved would be reinvested to employ more nurses. He made a yearly saving of 8M. Guess what no new nurses were taken on and the money wasted elsewhere.
He also advised they were top heavy with managers and admin who outnumbered nurses by 10 to 1, no action was taken

Utter bollocks.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-social-care-bill/mythbusters/nhs-managers

Myth about managers in the nhs and as for admin, of course there will be admin staff. Do you want qualified nurses to be nursing or organizing appointments? At the moment, nurses account for just under a third of all staff, with doctors accounting for another 10%.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/key-facts-figures-nhs

 

[drew]

The European healthcare system seems to make sense, a mixture of both private and public health care.

You can be a fan of the idea of the NHS and see it’s not fit for purpose at the moment, we plough so much money into it and the problems never seem to be fixed.

But we don't plough masses into the NHS. We spend less of our GDP on he NHS than the likes of Germany and France who many often cite as good examples. Germany spends about 1.5% more of their gdp on health. If we matched that rate it would mean a further £30b a year in the NHS. The fact is you get what you pay for.