General Discussion
Just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on this?
Here are a couple of newspaper articles that might give food for thought.
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The NHS cannot be immune from criticism - Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/.../The-NHS-cannot-be-immune-from-criticism.html
The NHS cannot be immune from criticism ... and media briefings disavowing any criticism of the totem of welfarism. The NHS, ... best British political ...
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The awkward truth about funding the NHS - Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/.../The-awkward-truth-about-funding-the-NHS.html
The awkward truth about funding the NHS ... made the now ritualistic genuflection before the great NHS totem when he announced ... The best British ...
The problem is not NHS funding, the problem is where all the money goes and on what.
The NHS is a business and as such the books need balancing.
For to many decades fat cat adminstrators and their cronies have been sucking the NHS dry. What is needed is a thinning of these so called administrators and their empires.
Money needs to be put into the healing/caring of people not administrators swanning around in their fancy suits dictating that a patient should be cured in a set time and under no circumstances given a bed.
The government needs to move its fat backside and put appropriate legislation in place to stop the expensive practise of people jetting to the UK to have expensive prodeures only to disappear without paying for them.
If nothing is done to stop the rot in the NHS and the associated government bodies we will end up with a few super max hospital complexes around the country. There will be no local hospitals and, at some point in the future, the few super max hospital complexes will be sold off to private enterprise allowing the government to wash their hands off the costs of running the nhs, but still collect the taxes for it to spend.
The only reason the U.K. has debt issues is because those that we elect are quite happy to spend, spend, spend and print money and sell our i.o.u's to nation's such as Russia, Japan and China to name a few. In 2010 the interest on the national debt was estimated at around £42.9 billion!
Governemnt's solution to wasting taxes payer's is to raise taxes as they have always done. Don't pay your taxes go straight to jail.
Perhaps we might ultimately end up with a two tier health provision system?
Private health care for those that can afford it, whilst for those of lesser means they would have whatever might be left of the NHS?
The NHS wouldn't be in such a parlous state if it wasn't for the disastrous PFI financing deals, almost all of them negotiated while Labour was in government.
A Telegraph article from 2015:
The NHS is spending more than £3,700 every minute to pay for privately financed hospitals, The Telegraph can disclose.
The bill for private finance initiative (PFI) hospital schemes will hit £2 billion for the first time this year – or £3,729 every 60 seconds. The cash is paid to private companies as part of an annual repayment fee for building and operating new hospitals as well as redeveloping old ones.
Bills have grown so large they would pay for the wages of all qualified midwives for two and a half years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospitals-costing-NHS-2bn-every-year.html
And it's not only hospitals that are costing us billions, this also affect schools and other infrastructure projects.
Well, however we are where we are, we are. If you see what I mean.
The question I'm posing is not how we got where we are but how we get out of where we are.
When it comes to PFI, there is no getting out of it. The taxpayer is obliged to fund the billions for several decades until the agreements expire.
So, no hope for the NHS then?
(and I've just been reading some other Telegraph articles on PFI. Seems the finger of blame for the PFI mess could get pointed in the direction of Whitehall civil servants whose skills and experience in negotiating deals with the private sector might just have left a lot to be desired).
Do so hope those civil servant negotiating skills have been honed up since............
Ultimately ministers are responsible for signing off the agreements, if they allowed civil servants to negotiate such poor deals that have cost the taxpayer billions then it reflects on them.
And I really don't think the government will be able hide behind or blame civil servants for any bad deals in the upcoming negotiations, the buck will stop at No 10.
We are going off subject but might I suggest that what will be and what will not be deemed to be good/bad deals in any upcoming negotiations will be in the eye of the beholders.
And lest we forget:
‘The most remembered statistic of the EU referendum campaign was the £350m a week for the NHS - a cynically deployed and rapidly disavowed non-fact for which no one can be held to account.’ Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston
That's the sort of global British export this country could afford to do without, Lynne. The locums might be sitting pretty, but with over 100 A&E doctors leaving annually each costing some £500k to train, that's £50 million a year going south. With £-vs-world currency exchange rates now looking set to remain depressed, who could blame a young doctor from being tempted abroad?
As Woolaston jumped ship from Leave to Remain midway through the referendum campaign, she sounds like somebody who doesn't really know her own mind, or was it a cynical ploy to discredit Leave? Either way, I don't have an ounce of respect for the woman.
Yes she did change sides I agree.
I remember she said that she did so because her 90+ aged father begged her to because he could remember what it was like fighting in WWII and he
saw the EU as a way of the European countries not fighting with each other again. (Anyone else notice that within less than a week of Article 50 being triggered a member of the House of Lords was talking about the UK going to war with another European country (Spain).
Are you saying then that the following is a lie? ‘The most remembered statistic of the EU referendum campaign was the £350m a week for the NHS - a cynically deployed and rapidly disavowed non-fact for which no one can be held to account.’ Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston
Read the side of the bus again. It stated we send £350 million a week to the EU, and suggested we fund the NHS instead. I didn't read that as a direct promise that £350m would definitely be channelled into the NHS, merely one of the possibilities (and, of course, we haven't even left the EU yet). As I have pointed out previously, the Leave campaign was not, and is not, the government so could hardly be in the position to make such a commitment.
And as for the old chestnut that the EU has maintained peace in Europe since the Second World War, what a load of old tosh. NATO and nuclear weapons have kept the peace. If anything, the EU is more likely to cause conflict with its expansionist policies into Eastern Europe.
Well whatever the Leave campaign meant by that message on the side of the bus I don't doubt for one moment there were those who did indeed believe that we could
fund the NHS to the tune of £350m per week once we'd left the EU.
When we leave the EU in two years' time we will be free to spend that £350m on the NHS or anything else the government of the day decides. I really don't understand why Remoaners expect the money to be spent now, when we are still contributing billions to the EU club.
So we await to see then just how much more does get spent on the NHS in two years time.
In the meantime how do we start sorting out the NHS now?
Quite, Lynne. The NHS cannot wait until the cusp of the next general election to be thrown a lifeline. Meanwhile that very real figure of £50 million a year is disappearing through doctors being trained here, then taking their skills abroad - even before the extra cost of locum doctors comes into play.