This Royal Mail strike is really something....

[SteveXFR]

2 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

why does it have to be a US style system, why not a French or German style system? on most measure they've got better health care than us

 

Because several of our current government MPs including the PM own a considerable value of shares in US health insurance companies. 

[SH73]

23 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

I'm convinced the government are trying to make the NHS so bad that they can force privatisation and a US style system because obviously if you're going to copy any system you go for the one rated as 34th best 

Some Eastern European countries have a good system. You go to your GP, and if after examination they decide to refer you, you often see a specialist the same day. You are expected to wait in the waiting room for hours, but you see them regardless. People have insurance , which you register with your GP etc. Your employer pays for your health insurance unless you're self employed pay yourself or unemployed paid by system.

 

Children don't go to see any GP, they have paediatric GP surgeries.

 

You are always guaranteed an appointment. If you're are not happy to wait at GP surgery, you can pay for a appointment time slot.

Technically,the health care is a small fee you pay or your employer pays. 

 

[tegs07]

It’s worth remembering that the people who have the most power at the polls tend to be the older demographic. They also tend to use the NHS more than most. No government with a stated mandate to privatise the NHS would ever get elected.

[PaulWarning]

10 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Because several of our current government MPs including the PM own a considerable value of shares in US health insurance companies. 

Ah, conspiracy theories, Labour have been banging on for years about the Tories privatising the NHS (remember Tony Blair's 7 days to save the NHS?) and because of this it's impossible to even discuss a different type of health cover without the 'US system' bogeyman being shouted from the rooftops, the NHS is just a bureaucratic money pit, it needs reform but everybody is too scared to do it because of the political fallout.

It needs taking out of the political arena so sensible decisions can be made

[SH73]

8 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

It’s worth remembering that the people who have the most power at the polls tend to be the older demographic.

Is this was caused the end of certain era in January 2020?

[tegs07]

3 minutes ago, SH73 said:

Is this was caused the end of certain era in January 2020?

Not sure if it caused it. We can look at the stats for turnout and voting patterns. Seems to me a lot of people didn’t bother to vote so can’t really complain 

[Lozz196]

I recall seeing a chap on Question Time saying that the NHS was founded to look after a certain sized, certain aged population funded by a proportionate budget. The first two have increased but as he said to the audience, any political party that says they will take more of our money to make the NHS work as intended is pretty much guaranteed to lose votes.

 

So as he said, everyone votes for the party that says less tax/NI, but then complains that public services get worse. 
 

I thought he made a lot of sense (he wasn’t a politician so he had a head start there) and maybe it’s time to acknowledge that more is needed to address it. Maybe they should also get people like this chap in to advise on it.

 

 

[Burns-bass]

10 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

Ah, conspiracy theories, Labour have been banging on for years about the Tories privatising the NHS (remember Tony Blair's 7 days to save the NHS?) and because of this it's impossible to even discuss a different type of health cover without the 'US system' bogeyman being shouted from the rooftops, the NHS is just a bureaucratic money pit, it needs reform but everybody is too scared to do it because of the political fallout.

It needs taking out of the political arena so sensible decisions can be made

Reformed by who?

 

Labour have had a crack, as have the Tories. Your option to depoliticise it is a good one, and I think is probably only the reasonable solution. 

 

I worked with the NHS for several years and the idea that it’s overly bureaucratic and wasteful is nonsense. In fact, for many of the stretched staff (clinical and non-clinical) it’s offensive.

 

People always complain be NHS is hugely wasteful but can never provide an example, aside from diversity officers.

 

[tegs07]

2 minutes ago, Burns-bass said:

Reformed by who?

 

Labour have had a crack, as have the Tories. Your option to depoliticise it is a good one, and I think is probably only the reasonable solution. 

 

I worked with the NHS for several years and the idea that it’s overly bureaucratic and wasteful is nonsense. In fact, for many of the stretched staff (clinical and non-clinical) it’s offensive.

 

People always complain be NHS is hugely wasteful but can never provide an example, aside from diversity officers.

 

I have friends working in IT for the NHS who report of layers of middle management and bad planning.

[PaulWarning]

I know anecdotal evidence should be treated with scepticism, but, our old guitarist worked for the NHS in middle management, he thought all the different trust were a big waste of resources, caused lots of problems because they all had their own way of doing things 

[Lozz196]

My boss at work is friends with an NHS coach driver. The coach driver rather obviously drives the coach to take patients home.

 

Or he would, but he’s not permitted to drive the coach without another staff member in it. Which they often don’t have as it’s just as & when staff are available rather than a set duty.

 

So he gets paid full time to sit in the office the majority of the time with an occasional drive out and taxis are called to take the patients home instead.

 

Taxis which not only don’t have 2 NHS workers in them, they don’t have 1.

 

Now the cost of those taxis must far outweigh hiring another member of staff (possibly 2) whose sole role would be to accompany the coach driver.

 

I think that’s the kind of waste and bureaucracy people think of. 

 

 

[SH73]

12 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

My boss at work is friends with an NHS coach driver. The coach driver rather obviously drives the coach to take patients home.

 

Or he would, but he’s not permitted to drive the coach without another staff member in it. Which they often don’t have as it’s just as & when staff are available rather than a set duty.

 

So he gets paid full time to sit in the office the majority of the time with an occasional drive out and taxis are called to take the patients home instead.

 

Taxis which not only don’t have 2 NHS workers in them, they don’t have 1.

 

Now the cost of those taxis must far outweigh hiring another member of staff (possibly 2) whose sole role would be to accompany the coach driver.

 

I think that’s the kind of waste and bureaucracy people think of. 

 

 

For obvious reasons I think it's for safety aspect. Are these vans equipped with CCTV? 

[mikel]

1 hour ago, tegs07 said:

It’s worth remembering that the people who have the most power at the polls tend to be the older demographic. They also tend to use the NHS more than most. No government with a stated mandate to privatise the NHS would ever get elected.

They did get elected. Its not a stated mandate, but its well documented and fairly obvious. Run a service into the ground, the public complain about it, so they dont complain when its privatised. 

[tegs07]

15 minutes ago, mikel said:

They did get elected. Its not a stated mandate, but its well documented and fairly obvious. Run a service into the ground, the public complain about it, so they dont complain when its privatised. 

Well we all have the chance to turn it around shortly. I don’t think the NHS should or will be privatised and any political party that tries in the UK will be consigned to the back benches indefinitely. 

Edited December 28, 2022 by tegs07

[Dan Dare]

16 minutes ago, mikel said:

Run a service into the ground, the public complain about it, so they don't complain when its privatised. 

 

This appears to be the tactic, bit it isn't as crude as wholesale privatisation. What is happening is that pieces of the NHS are being nibbled away and hived off into private hands. The services the private providers are taking over are those which can turn a profit, of course. The same thing happened with the railways.

 

Eventually, we will be left with a two tier system, where those who can afford it get comprehensive care and those who can't will have a basic, safety net service.

[SteveXFR]

Reform of the NHS is definitely needed but a US style system is definitely not the right sort of reform. Its a system which leaves people in severe debt after they get illnesses not covered by their policy. They also have incredibly expensive prescriptions, we worked out my wife's insulin and test strips would cost us around $1800 per month!

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, SH73 said:

For obvious reasons I think it's for safety aspect. Are these vans equipped with CCTV? 

Agree, am sure has to be for safety, not sure re CCTV, just the minibus type of vans. 

[mikel]

1 hour ago, tegs07 said:

Well we all have the chance to turn it around shortly. I don’t think the NHS should or will be privatised and any political party that tries in the UK will be consigned to the back benches indefinitely. 

Sadly not. If the usual suspects in the gutter press dont report it the majority of the population assume it hasnt happened. It worked with the rest of our services that have been sold off to have "Competition" in the markets, Gas, Water Electricity, public transport, etc, so dont assume they wont do it with the NHS. 

[Leonard Smalls]

2 hours ago, tegs07 said:

I have friends working in IT for the NHS who report of layers of middle management and bad planning.

Funnily enough, when I worked for Auntie Beeb we had lots of layers of management, and some terrible planning... 

In order to save money, they'd make craft staff (i.e. those who edited, or dubbed, or recorded pix/sound) redundant, but keep the layers of management.

Then the programmes themselves (as everything in the beeb was separate within the internal market) would hire those same craft folks to do the work for them. It would cost the programme makers the same, the editor/mixer etc would get paid more because more of the money went to them, and the resources dept who'd made the craft person redundant would save the wages of that person, but lose the far bigger amount of money that hiring them out would bring in.

So Resources would lose money, and would eventually only exist in order to hire in staff. Which would mean that all the lower tiers of management would also be made redundant and upper management would be congratulated for reducing the amount of staff (though programme budgets went up as the supply of BBC trained folks became more in demand, what with BBC training also disappearing).

I suspect a similar thing is happening in the NHS!

[SteveXFR]

Yeah that competition in the water industry works great. If I decide I'm not happy with Wessex Water, I simply move to a different area to switch suppliers. 

I work in the water industry and think it should be re nationalised

[chris_b]

17 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Funnily enough, when I worked for Auntie Beeb we had lots of layers of management, and some terrible planning... 

 

 

In the 80's BT chopped out 3 layers of IT middle management and the business didn't miss a beat. What a surprise.

 

I worked for Big Blue in the 00's and in 5 years we had 6 reshuffles! These had no effect on the job we were doing or on the service we gave to our customers. They were pointless and only proved to me, yet again, that a large percentage of managers are an expensive and unproductive bunch of wasters.

 

And don't get me started on US management! OK, I will. . . . in the 90's we were taken over by a US company and the first project for the management was to count the carpet squares in all the offices, to ensure that no one had a bigger office than their manager!! They were also annoyed to find out that several of the smaller offices had curtains and the managers offices didn't!!

[tegs07]

28 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Funnily enough, when I worked for Auntie Beeb we had lots of layers of management, and some terrible planning... 

In order to save money, they'd make craft staff (i.e. those who edited, or dubbed, or recorded pix/sound) redundant, but keep the layers of management.

Then the programmes themselves (as everything in the beeb was separate within the internal market) would hire those same craft folks to do the work for them. It would cost the programme makers the same, the editor/mixer etc would get paid more because more of the money went to them, and the resources dept who'd made the craft person redundant would save the wages of that person, but lose the far bigger amount of money that hiring them out would bring in.

So Resources would lose money, and would eventually only exist in order to hire in staff. Which would mean that all the lower tiers of management would also be made redundant and upper management would be congratulated for reducing the amount of staff (though programme budgets went up as the supply of BBC trained folks became more in demand, what with BBC training also disappearing).

I suspect a similar thing is happening in the NHS!

Ah the glorious Beeb. Just as technology and broadcasting were at the point of convergence with end to end digital production a hairs breadth away they go and outsource their entire technology division and keep a load of analogue broadcast engineers in house. Genius.

[tauzero]

12 hours ago, SH73 said:

I think junior doctors are in the same position, overworked.

 

In 2015, Jeremy Hunt imposed a pay rise on them that was below what their pay review board recommended. From this arise (at least) three points:

1. Junior doctors hate the Chancellor of the Exchequer
2. The pay review board can be overridden
3. Junior doctors have probably been treated the worst of any NHS staff in real terms pay cuts in the last 12 years

A survey showed that 40% of them were looking to get out of the NHS. A third of them were going to try to work overseas, Australia being the favourite destination.

 

One of my nephews is currently training to be a doctor. He intends to quit the UK - he wants to work in an English-speaking country as communicating in his first language will mean less risk of misunderstanding, so I expect he'll head off to Australia or New Zealand.

[lidl e]

Just received one thing im waiting for. Ordered Nov. 29th.

[Paul S]

Unbelievably I had a first class signed for delivered today that was posted yetserday.