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The NHS Debate (Merged threads)


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Of course,it is, according to who?  Does this stop it being incredibly inefficient and ridiculously expensive?

 

The Commonwealth Fund, but hey, don't let facts stand in the way of your prejudices. 

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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Of course,it is, according to who?  Does this stop it being incredibly inefficient and ridiculously expensive?

 

 

The Commonwealth Fund, but hey, don't let facts stand in the way of your prejudices. 

 

Thanks Griff, I was going to post the same but I was on my phone earlier.  Here's the nice table from the report:

 

Davis_Mirror_2014_ES1_for_web.jpg

 

Slightly more expensive than New Zealand but hey you have to pay for quality right?

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Here's one for you. The NHS was never meant to become what it did.  It's accident and not design that saw it become the incredibly inefficient, incredibly expensive organisation it became.

 

As for the rest, well that's socialist ideology laid bare.  A bankrupt country where people are broken, and what does the 'state' do?  Puts the country in hock for decades to come, creates an industrial landscape that leads to punitive tax rates on the lowest paid and drives out any form of progress.

 

Look at what this ideology did over the next few decades, left the UK light years behind the developing economies all around it.

 

The 1947 Housing Act banned the building of private houses and put it all under state control.  That went well.

 

Oh, and when did post war rationing stop?

Incredibly inefficient?  You haven't a single clue what you're talking about.

 

In STATE FUNDED healthcare, the UK spends under half the cost per head of the US.  In the US, if you don't have private insurance then you're essentially left in the skip to die and be quick about it.  The NHS is the most efficient public sector healthcare organisation in the world in terms of output against state funding per head.  We could increase NHS funding by 50% and we'd STILL be cheaper.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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Wait a minute

What happened to the "The NHS ain't save under the Tories"

You cant have it both ways

Imagine a very well engineered car running at 6000RPM permanently, you'll burn the thing out far faster than if you managed it properly.  That's what you have with the NHS.  You have nurses and doctors working voluntary overtime free of charge just to keep patients being treated.  You now have some hospital trusts with over one year waiting lists again (Barts Hospital has gone from an average wait of 6-10 weeks in the 2000s to a significant number now waiting over one year and the average scratching six months for many services).  You have mental health services seeing unprecedented demands but keep getting year on year cuts (Norfolk & Suffolk mental health trust cannot afford to hire vacant nursing posts because they have had 8% funding cuts, have had their beds cut by over 40% and have to send acutely ill patients into the private sector at £600-£1000 per night.  Then you get the stealth privatisation and extra cuts where the NHS has no choice, they either go private or don't do it because they're not allowed to do it.

 

You have health trusts that are failing because they simply don't have the money to do it.  You have senior health leaders who refuse to take the top jobs because they will get blamed for government choices and forced to resign.  Take for example Cambridge Hospitals Trust, one of the best run trusts only a few years ago but given cut after cut in their budget but forced to take even greater patient numbers, their senior directors (the same ones who built it to be one of the best in England) have been forced to resign after the trust went into special measures, yet no-one with even half a brain who knows the proper facts would ever think it's anything other than the faults of those who provide their funding.

 

You now have more health trusts in special measures than any time since the NHS's creation (including all the different types of intervention over the decades) yet Jeremy Hunt is teflon untouchable blaming it all on the incompetence of the trust senior management and not his fault for doubling their work while giving an average of 10% real-terms health cuts.

 

THEN you get the social care that the NHS used to do, that's been devolved to the local councils with the spin that this will allow more local intervention and social targeting.  Unfortunately, now that social care is out of the NHS it's fair game for cuts because it's no longer ring-fenced.  Local councils look at the nice social care budgets and their shoestring budgets and that's where this year's council cuts are going to overwhelmingly affect.  Ah well, again, not the Tories' fault, all the fault of those local councils who can't manage their halved budgets.

 

The NHS is about as safe under the Tories as frail old people were under Harold Shipman.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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Then you get idiots like that Evans woman on Question Time tonight who waffles on about too many managers in the NHS.  The NHS has approximately half of the managers you will find in private hospitals.  Clinicians are being forced into management roles, taking time away from clinical duties simply because their staff need to be managed somehow.  Do idiots like her (and those others who go on about too many managers) really think that it's appropriate for senior clinicians to be spending half their week doing routine management?  Would you have an accountant do a doctor's role?  If not, why would you ever think a doctor could do an accountant's?

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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Imagine a very well engineered car running at 6000RPM permanently, you'll burn the thing out far faster than if you managed it properly.  That's what you have with the NHS.  You have nurses and doctors working voluntary overtime free of charge just to keep patients being treated.  You now have some hospital trusts with over one year waiting lists again (Barts Hospital has gone from an average wait of 6-10 weeks in the 2000s to a significant number now waiting over one year and the average scratching six months for many services).  You have mental health services seeing unprecedented demands but keep getting year on year cuts (Norfolk & Suffolk mental health trust cannot afford to hire vacant nursing posts because they have had 8% funding cuts, have had their beds cut by over 40% and have to send acutely ill patients into the private sector at £600-£1000 per night.  Then you get the stealth privatisation and extra cuts where the NHS has no choice, they either go private or don't do it because they're not allowed to do it.

 

You have health trusts that are failing because they simply don't have the money to do it.  You have senior health leaders who refuse to take the top jobs because they will get blamed for government choices and forced to resign.  Take for example Cambridge Hospitals Trust, one of the best run trusts only a few years ago but given cut after cut in their budget but forced to take even greater patient numbers, their senior directors (the same ones who built it to be one of the best in England) have been forced to resign after the trust went into special measures, yet no-one with even half a brain who knows the proper facts would ever think it's anything other than the faults of those who provide their funding.

 

You now have more health trusts in special measures than any time since the NHS's creation (including all the different types of intervention over the decades) yet Jeremy Hunt is teflon untouchable blaming it all on the incompetence of the trust senior management and not his fault for doubling their work while giving an average of 10% real-terms health cuts.

 

THEN you get the social care that the NHS used to do, that's been devolved to the local councils with the spin that this will allow more local intervention and social targeting.  Unfortunately, now that social care is out of the NHS it's fair game for cuts because it's no longer ring-fenced.  Local councils look at the nice social care budgets and their shoestring budgets and that's where this year's council cuts are going to overwhelmingly affect.  Ah well, again, not the Tories' fault, all the fault of those local councils who can't manage their halved budgets.

 

The NHS is about as safe under the Tories as frail old people were under Harold Shipman.

Think you need to make your mind up

"The NHS is the most efficient public sector healthcare organisation in the world in terms of output against state funding per head.  We could increase NHS funding by 50% and we'd STILL be cheaper.

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Think you need to make your mind up

"The NHS is the most efficient public sector healthcare organisation in the world in terms of output against state funding per head.  We could increase NHS funding by 50% and we'd STILL be cheaper.

Just imagine how great our NHS would be properly funded.  We could get back to properly treating patients within waiting times as under the last Labour government.  We could treat healthcare seriously again.

 

I have made my mind up.  As have you.  And yours just can't see that you can be the most brutally efficient healthcare system in the world and we'd still be failing because we're underfunded.  It'd be like taking Mo Farah, forcing him to eat McDonalds every day for dinner then wondering why he can't win races any longer.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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The Lib/Dems at their conference can gloat and say "this is what a real Tory government is like" but they supinely allowed most of what gone wrongin the NHS to happen when they were part of the government.  They nodded through the Lansley changes, whilst strenuously saying they weren't doing.  So in part it's also their fault.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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The Lib/Dems at their conference can gloat and say "this is what a real Tory government is like" but they supinely allowed most of what gone wrongin the NHS to happen when they were part of the government. They nodded through the Lansley changes, whilst strenuously saying they weren't doing. So in part it's also their fault.

The most gobsmackingly and outrageously incredible aspect of Farron's conference speech was his praise for what Norman Lamb did for mental health provision in the NHS. Totally deluded!

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Then you get idiots like that Evans woman on Question Time tonight who waffles on about too many managers in the NHS. The NHS has approximately half of the managers you will find in private hospitals. Clinicians are being forced into management roles, taking time away from clinical duties simply because their staff need to be managed somehow. Do idiots like her (and those others who go on about too many managers) really think that it's appropriate for senior clinicians to be spending half their week doing routine management? Would you have an accountant do a doctor's role? If not, why would you ever think a doctor could do an accountant's?

I've always had the same feeling in regards to schools. If you excel at teaching, inspiring kids to greater things, inspiring your junior teaching colleagues through your teaching excellence, routinely impressing Ofsted inspectors with your teaching excellence, over the years gaining greater experience in high quality teaching, you can climb the teaching ladder and eventually the make you into an ADMINISTRATOR! Bonkers!

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The most gobsmackingly and outrageously incredible aspect of Farron's conference speech was his praise for what Norman Lamb did for mental health provision in the NHS. Totally deluded!

He took a system that was broken, broken by Labour, and then cut it by another 10% in real terms funding.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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Thanks Griff, I was going to post the same but I was on my phone earlier.  Here's the nice table from the report:

 

Davis_Mirror_2014_ES1_for_web.jpg

 

Slightly more expensive than New Zealand but hey you have to pay for quality right?

 

A report produced entirely from surveys and hard data from the NHS or any other health body.  Rock solid stuff then.

 

That seemingly unnecessary top down re-organisation really did the trick.

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Incredibly inefficient?  You haven't a single clue what you're talking about.

 

In STATE FUNDED healthcare, the UK spends under half the cost per head of the US.  In the US, if you don't have private insurance then you're essentially left in the skip to die and be quick about it.  The NHS is the most efficient public sector healthcare organisation in the world in terms of output against state funding per head.  We could increase NHS funding by 50% and we'd STILL be cheaper.

 

The old they are crapper than us, so we must be great line.  How does how other irrelevant bodies perform change the fact that the NHS IS incredibly inefficient and expensive?

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Just imagine how great our NHS would be properly funded.  We could get back to properly treating patients within waiting times as under the last Labour government.  We could treat healthcare seriously again.

 

I have made my mind up.  As have you.  And yours just can't see that you can be the most brutally efficient healthcare system in the world and we'd still be failing because we're underfunded.  It'd be like taking Mo Farah, forcing him to eat McDonalds every day for dinner then wondering why he can't win races any longer.

 

Properly funded? £110bn a year isn't proper funding? What is a proper funding amount?  Your comparison of the NHS to a well engineered engine running at high speed is, frankly, laughable.

 

It's an organisation that is awash with money and riddled with a culture of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement by empire building 'management' that cannot see outside of their own narrow interests..

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It's an organisation that is awash with money and riddled with a culture of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement by empire building 'management' that cannot see outside of their own narrow interests..

 

Despite ALL the evidence suggesting it provides excellent value for money and is highly efficient, it even does well in the area it is most popularly criticised - timeliness of care i.e waiting times.

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Despite ALL the evidence suggesting it provides excellent value for money and is highly efficient, it even does well in the area it is most popularly criticised - timeliness of care i.e waiting times.

 

The problem the NHS faces is the political debate it engenders, and the difficulty of achieving accountability and financial transparency.

 

We all think we know that the NHS is super efficient or hopelessly inefficient, depending on mainly anecdotal evidence or our own personal experience.

 

But the NHS is such a massive organisation that none of us can really claim to have a genuine insight into the quality of its management.

 

My father was a male nurse for most of his working life, right from the time the NHS was first established.

 

Despite being a dedicated socialist he was frustrated with the way the NHS worked, believing that the management was too autocratic.

 

But that was just a snapshot of his experience of a particular time and place.

 

I simply don't know whether that criticism would still be appropriate today.

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The old they are crapper than us, so we must be great line.  How does how other irrelevant bodies perform change the fact that the NHS IS incredibly inefficient and expensive?

If it's as bad as you say it's become that way under the Tories.  Satisfaction with the NHS was at a record high in 2010. So much so that the Tories' election strategy was not to mention it.  And then when they got it begin to dismantle it.  We know what the Tories think of the NHS privately, that it was (in 2008) a 60 year old mistake.   Health care in the US is far more inefficient than here because of all the bureaucracy making charges.  Which is what the Tories want for here. God help us.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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Tell you what you right wingers, as a social experiment, lets do away with the NHs and go back to the days where if working class people went to hospital it was to die, back to the days where if you couldn't afford treatment, guess what? yep you died.

 

 

Personal note my great grandfather died after cutting himself shaving!!! Got the cut infected working on the farm and pegged it of septicaemia, ok penicillin wasn't around then but basically he died because he and his family couldn't afford medical treatment.

 

All the rest of it, fiscal ###### and ###### about inefficient management hierarchies is just smoke and mirrors to obfuscate the main point, without the NHS a good proportion of people on this board would be dead by now because they wouldn't be able to afford treatment, no more, no less, that's the reality.

"Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality" - Mikhail Bakunin

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I've yet to see a viable and affordable alternative suggestion from those who like to complain about the NHS and call it "incredibly inefficient and expensive". And no, you can't compare the NHS to private health care provision in this country. The private health sector have the advantage of picking and choosing who and what they would like to treat, the NHS have to treat everyone with every condition.

 

That said, the answer to the question "could the NHS be better and more efficient?" will always be yes. Nothing is ever perfect, and if you ask that question of any organisation or business the answer will always be the same. 

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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