Is the NHS really safe in Tory hands?

First topic message reminder :

Here is a news item from North Yorkshire which never made it onto the national headlines

A York-based practice has written to its patients offering them a range of minor treatments privately, claiming they are not funded by the local NHS.

Doctors' leaders said this could be the start of a worrying trend due to the squeeze on finances and NHS overhaul.

The letter, seen by the BBC, said local health chiefs had stopped funding a range of services, but added they could still have them done privately at a number of clinics, including one owned by the practice.

These included removing skin tags from £56.30 to treating benign tumours for £243.20.

Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British Medical Association, added: "The dire finances of many trusts means that many more NHS treatments are likely to become unavailable in the future".

I can understand the frustration felt by many regarding the present state of the NHS.

It is obvious that ther are large diffrences between certain areas regarding the services provided.

I have had cause to be admitted to hospital on three recent occasions for different tests, this involved about 15 hours in all.

The treatment was first class and the fact that you had to wait is justifiable because there are always people in more need than others, and this cannot be pre- calculated.

I feel the whole problem with nearly every aspect of life today is that we are ruled by a number of people that includes those with the most undesirable qualities and no one is willing to sort them out.

So the doe-eyed but hard-nosed Jeremy *unt would quite like to be PM.

Who knew?

Is the NHS really safe in Tory hands? No
Is the country really safe in Tory hands? No

It is evidently a routine assumption that NHS hospital patients who want to "fast-track" an Operation can do so if they're willing and able to pay.

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for official details of how that works.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!

No comment.....  

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Or to put it another way, you can't get a quart out of a pint pot. But there's no need to worry - You can get 300 million £ a week from Boris' brexit campaign bus alone.

Hunt was, undoubtedly, brought up to do as he was told. Identify who is doing the telling, to find a solution.

A North Yorkshire 'NHS' Trust is banning the obese from receiving operations for up to a year........At least they are being truthful in saying that it is to save money and try and cut their deficit.....I wonder how long it will be before other groups are added to the list who will have to wait just to save money?...
This and the previous government will carry on saying they are spending more on the NHS but then again they are asking for more 'savings' to be made.....

I wonder how long it will be before other groups are added to the list who will have to wait just to save money?

Skivers, scroungers, immigrants, EU – who next can we find in order to continue the success of Tory ‘divide and rule’ policies? How about people who are obese? They tend to be unattractive, and many people readily accept that they all must be overweight because they eat too much. But that’s just not true.

People can gradually become obese because they spend long working days in an office and commuting, and they just don’t have time to exercise. Disabled people who are immobile can't usually exercise. Your genes can affect the amount of fat you store in your body, and an underactive thyroid will slow down your metabolism and cause weight gain. In other words, if someone is obese it may well not be their fault.

The NHS Trust which is planning to refuse to treat obese people is breaking the principle that we’re all entitled to medical help if we need it. It’s the thin end of the wedge. Even if it were true that all obese people are responsible for their own predicament, what next? Does the NHS refuse to treat smokers, alcoholics and drug users? And then what about someone who develops melanoma because of too much sun-bathing? In the end, they’d find one excuse or another for not treating any of us – unless of course we are able to pay for it. This move sets a very dangerous precedent.

astradt1 wrote:A North Yorkshire 'NHS' Trust is banning the obese from receiving operations for up to a year.....

Well that idea didn't last very long, but the problem of underfunding remains for the NHS. The strike action proposed by junior doctors has provoked the expected reaction from the Tory government and its right-wing Press: "they just want more money" in the usual simplified shorthand they prefer. Nobody in the profession denies the common sense of using all seven days of the week to treat patients, but working unsocial hours without financial reward just balances the Chancellors' books at their expense.

It's no secret that Jeremy Hunt wants Health Insurers to take charge with a view to scaling back social medicine. That must not be allowed to happen. See what has happened with housing since the Tories stopped building council houses.

UBER FOR DOCS New app allows patients to pay £50 to queue-jump to see NHS GP..........

The doctor will see you now (if you call him on the webcam): Patients pay £30 for virtual chat with private GP on £180k a year


Now what was that about NHS being safe in Tory hands?

It seems now that we can forget about 'Post Code Lottery' when it come to health care it will soon be all about having the right technology and the ability to pay.


I do not have a web cam, I do not have a mobile phone of any description and I do not have the ability to pay for an appointment to see a Doctor........

I just wonder how during these Skype appointments the GP will be able to listen to your chest or take your blood pressure, no doubt there will soon be a push to get everyone to buy their own electronic blood pressure machine and a digital thermometer, I wonder if some techie is working on an app that will allow the 'patient to put their mobile phone or pc microphone up against their chest to enable the doctor to listen for breathing or heart beat..........

Or will these appointments be like NHS Direct (111) calls where you give your history and symptoms and are then told to go to the nearest A&E?

A lot of Tory dogma will be shored-up amidst the confusion surrounding Brexit proposals, Jeremy Hunt was quick out of the blocks about controlling "immigrants" working in the NHS - knowing full well that it can't work without them.

The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.

Overheard a conversation between a registrar and nurses, while visiting son in hospital yesterday, the doctor was telling the nurses he only had a couple of weeks left to work before he quit the NHS to go and work abroad. The nurses asked what about the NHS, the doctor said there would still be a NHS but not in it's current form and he didn't want to be a part of what it was going to become...........

Back in the 1960s that was dubbed "The Brain Drain" by British newspapers. NHS-trained staff were able to earn three- or four-times as much money in the USA.

Does anyone really believe that this country can afford the NHS as a free service in the future? The amount of money needed to fund the NHS, whatever government is in power, will be beyond this country's ability to find. We want our emergency services, our defence forces etc. etc. Population growth, growth of the elderly population, the need for mental health services, welfare services grows every year.

Perhaps if this were a Theocracy the almighty would provide more money, but it isn't.

However, it seems other options (eg the American model) are more expensive and lead to a level of unfairness in provision that I for one would find unacceptable.

Does anyone really believe that this country can afford the NHS as a free service in the future?

trevorw2539. I think you’re looking at the issue from the wrong angle. Why do we spend a smaller proportion of our GDP on healthcare than countries such as France and Germany? How can the sixth richest country in the world not be able to afford healthcare for its citizens? If the UK, ravaged by war, could afford to set up the NHS in 1948, it can certainly afford to finance it now - it just needs politicians with the will to do it.

Apparently we can afford to renew Trident, even though only one other EU country (France) feels the need to have nuclear weapons. We can afford for Cameron to pack the House of Lords with hundreds of cronies, so that there are now over 800 peers entitled to claim at least £300 every time they put their heads round the door. We can afford the stupendous cost of employing lawyers and thousands more civil servants so that the country can commit national suicide by leaving the EU. Money can soon be found to refurbish Buckingham Palace, even though that could have been self-financing if the old girl who rattles about in it had allowed paying visitors all year round.

Then there is the fact that the NHS is being deliberately destroyed by the Tories. Oliver Letwin once promised us that there would be no NHS after five years of a Tory government. Daniel Hannan went on American TV and called the NHS “a 60-year mistake”, and the man currently in charge of the NHS, Jeremy Hunt, co-authored a book calling for its fragmentation. A relative of mine is a nurse and she explained how money is squandered in her hospital, thanks to the Tories. First they cut the number of nurses, and then every time the hospital is short-staffed, bank nurses have to be employed at a much higher cost. And then there was the £3 billion of the NHS budget which was wasted on a top-down reorganisation for which Cameron had no mandate.

Population growth doesn’t stop us from affording the NHS. A larger population means greater demand for healthcare, but it also means more people paying tax and national insurance to finance it. An ageing population means that we need to spend proportionately more of our GDP on health and social care and, logically, proportionately less on educating the young. But of course we can’t afford free further education either, because the political will isn’t there at present. It’s all so short-sighted: a healthy and well-education workforce has to be good for the economy. But then right-wing politics is always short-sighted. Deny climate change, sell off the family silver, sod the future and don’t let anything get in the way of making a fast buck today.

QUOTE: "every time the hospital is short-staffed, bank nurses have to be employed at a much higher cost."

It gets worse, the (NHS is safe in our hands) government now plans to privatise the NHS own internal staff procurement service.
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That answers nothing. The NHS was a brilliant idea. Times have changed. In the first year the NHS exceeded its estimated budget by 10x.

Britain of those days was living on $Bns in loans from the US and Canada to help it through. All loans from the war years and after are repaid. We are now living in different times with a debt that is getting greater. GDP wise it varied between 30 and 50% After the crash of 2008 it started to climb rapidly. It has to be dealt with.

We already spend more on Health than any other G7 country.

Regardless of which Government is in power I do not see the NHS and Welfare bills ever being sustainable in the future as a free service. When the NHS was first set up it was to treat those who were recognised as sick. The meaning of 'sickness' today has extended far beyond the original. We are treating diseases not even recognised in the 50's to prolong life. Care homes were only just coming in as workhouses went out.
We support a vast number of patients that were not even considered really ill then. If they were, they were locked away. We keep alive those who would have died 50 years ago, even if they do not want it.

There is no way you can compare the start of the NHS with today. Couple that with the Welfare Bill and Pensions, and the almost certain shrinking, IMHO, of the shrinking of our economy with Brexit, someone has to start thinking of charging for more than prescriptions - however unpopular that may be.

Of course we could always euthanise those over 70. Then you wouldn't have to worry about me posting on here.

But that is just my opinion.

The Nation still can afford a NHS which is free at the point of delivery. Because it is necessary.
At the start of WW2, the Army rejected a large proportion of conscripts because they were simply too weedy and unfit for active duty.
People forget just how expensive it was to stay healthy, keep your own teeth, have crooked bones corrected and eyesight maintained, in the 1930s.

trevorw2539 wrote:We already spend more on Health than any other G7 country.

Absolute rubbish. The G7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

UK spending on healthcare is the lowest of the G7 countries:-
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Contrary to the media scare stories, the actual cost of 'health tourism' is estimated at £70m, just 0.06% of the NHS's annual budget:-
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Still, that’s useful in deflecting attention from what’s really going on…..

Secret plan for £22 billion of NHS cuts could force A&Es, hospitals and maternity units to shut.

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“Health tourism is a pin prick in discussing the problems facing the NHS.” (Dr Mark Porter)

If you care about the NHS, you don’t vote to leave it in the hands of the Tories who, for ideological reasons, hate it and will do all that they can to destroy it without you even noticing.

Absolute rubbish. The G7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Ok. I concede. Going into the different systems of Medical care, who actually pays who, for what, and  why and the part Insurance companies have,  is  not worth discussing.

I'd have thought maybe that was the crux of the matter - if we accept that it is desirable for people to have good health care, surely we'd want to understand about the nuts and bolts of how it's paid for and get some idea of which systems are more cost-effective and efficient

That will be the day when Insurance Companies reveal transparency over premium calculations, payout rates and profitability. You can't even get an accurate figure of how much they might pay you as a pension in retirement, until you get there.

Private Medical insurance is for 12 months at a time. Renewal may be at higher cost, or simply declined. Ever since the NHS was created, there has been criticism of how many admin staff are required to keep the medical people working effectively. As to foreigners getting treated free, the attitude of front-line nurses and doctors is that they are there to treat the sick, not as tax collectors.

Government scolded by watchdog over NHS funding claims

From an article by Denis Campbell:-

The watchdog overseeing how ministers use official statistics has told the government to be clearer and more exact in its claims about NHS funding after it investigated Theresa May’s contentious claim that she was giving the health service a £10bn boost. The UK Statistics Authority looked into the PM’s repeated use of the £10bn claim after Labour and the British Medical Association complained that the figure was misleading and wrong. It has asked the Treasury to overhaul how government spending on both the NHS and health more widely is presented in order to minimise the risk of further “confusion” about the size of budget rises.

The UKSA’s intervention followed an increasingly public disagreement between May and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, over how much extra funding the government had pledged to give the health service over the course of this parliament. May has put the figure at £10bn in the House Commons, a newspaper interview and at the Conservative Party conference. She said that sum meant her administration was giving the NHS more money than the £8bn it had asked for in 2014 in order to transform how it works and close a £30bn budget gap by 2020.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP and ex-GP who chairs the health select committee, has thrown her weight behind Stevens after a story in ‘The Mail on Sunday’ claimed that Downing Street was keen to oust the NHS boss because he had publicly disagreed with May’s account of the NHS’s budget.

For the whole article:-
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Hammond today hinted at greater Tory flexibility at the next Election around current "guarantees" on Pensions and the NHS.

Keep watching that move towards the right.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma makes its plans .... and awaits the opportunity.

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The photo which should be on every Labour election leaflet from now until the rancid Tories are kicked out of office:-

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'The worst conditions in memory': NHS doctors describe a week in A&E

This is what one of the doctors had to say:-

"It’s been like an absolute war zone recently. The government at the moment, not to mention my regulatory bodies, are ignoring the worst hospital conditions in my memory. We have a brilliant team, but are devastated by underemployment and underinvestment. We have two permanent registrars on a rota of seven places.

On a recent shift, I walked in to patients waiting four and a half hours to see a doctor. This means every patient has failed the 'breach' target by the time they’re seen. A diligent staff nurse asked me to take a look at a patient she was 'a bit worried about'. The woman was devastatingly ill with a perforated bowel, and could have easily become fatally unwell. She survived thanks to the observational diligence of my colleague, and later our excellent surgical team.

The London ambulance service is similarly overwhelmed. They couldn’t provide me with a transfer ambulance for another emergency case, an 11-year-old with a sight-threatening infection, in less than 70 minutes. The target is eight minutes. It is a miracle the child didn’t lose an eye."

Read what other doctors said here:-
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Today, on BBC Radio4's Today programme, Jeremy Hunt gave virtually the same apologia that he had given on the same programme two years earlier.

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Plus ca change ....

He looks shifty - doesn't even seem to believe what he's saying.

I don't think his job description has been revealed - he's not responsible for running the NHS but for running it into the ground - and on those terms he is a resounding success

The title of this thread long ago gave up being rhetorical, but now there seems to be a groundswell of distrust of government policy even among normally supportive media.

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On the BBC TV News at 6 pm John Pinaar was unusually critical and didn't use his time to rubbish Corbyn even once.

In both English and Scottish Law that "promise" probably comprises a False Bill of Sale.
But who're you gonna sue?