Save the NHS

I think that the new contract for GPs surprised even the BMA by its favourable terms for a 35-hour week. I found the following on the official website:

'The GP earnings report also shows that the number of GPs earning more than £200,000 fell by 2.2% from 900 to 720 last year.

GP partners in England earned more than those in the rest of the UK, with average income before tax of £107,700 compared to £89,300 in Scotland, £92,300 in Wales and £88,000 in Northern Ireland. For salaried GPs, the UK average income before tax in 2010/11 was £57,600, compared to £58,000 in 2009/10.'

Nobody would grudge GPs a decent return for all the years of study, but something needs to be done about the provision for out-of-hours care, which is often fragmented, inefficient and very expensive. Agencies are charging small fortunes to supply locums, some of whom have poor English.

done.we must fight this not just for us but for all the generation's to come. This goverment do just as they please regardless of how the nation feel's. Hope it does some good but not optimistic.

I begrudge GPs making millions from selling out of hours care to a private healthcare company.
It was a GP cooperative called Harmoni. 5 of the GPs made £2.8 million which could amount to £6.3 million including shares each. In the same article it says that fewer than 3% of GPs earn more than £200,000 a year.
This is money that belongs to the NHS.
Why is out of hours so lucrative? The NHS was a 24 hour service until a few years ago.
Why would a private healthcare company want to buy it unless it could make even more money out of it?
The link is epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40126 if you want to find out which private healthcare companies have connections to govt. ministers.

I have come across another e-petition to sign.
Private providers of public services to be subject to Freedom of Information Act.
At the moment it is impossible to find out about how much Branson controls and how much he has paid and is paid for our NHS services, because of confidentiality clauses in the FOI Act.
The same with lots of other companies. If they want to buy our public services, they should have to be open about it.

Jen, can you give me a link to the other petition?
I read now that there are plans to close a large number of A & E departments and centralise them - surely people in an emergency need to be treated quickly? Everything is about the bottom line.

38 Degrees (see my OP) has an ongoing campaign about NHS 'reforms'

If you can find stuff on 38 degrees. It's not as organised as this site.
I have just seen an article on the Green Benches website.
Apparently Care UK which has bought Harmoni out of hours and 111 contracts has had to sell £75m of its own bonds in order to raise cash to pay for the takeover, in other words to make GPs millionaires. Care UK is heavily in debt and is now to be more so. If it was a hospital it would have to be privatised!

Loads of stuff on Twitter about the NHA Party launch.

Greatnan, the link to the petition is
epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38851

The National Health Action Party is
nationalhealthaction.org.uk

I think the Tory party, which, let us remember, promised before the last election that it had no plans for top down reorganisation of the NHS, is hell-bent on NHS destruction. (I suppose in a way, the party's promise was true.) I think the plans have progressed too far for the NHS to be rescued. RIP NHS.

Thought you might like update on the current NHS and it's total disorganisation following on from my previous post about the debacle surrounding my husband's payments.

He had a phone call yesterday from yet another department to say that he was right, they were wrong, as were all the other dentists who argued with them, There was a fundamental flaw in the system!! This sort of inefficiency and waste will be replicated across the country and across all the departments resulting in rationing of actual care.

The NHS is unsustainable in its present, disorganised, form. There is not enough money for everyone to have everything and there needs to be fundamental reform.

When DH nd I were at the Heart Hospital last Monday, the hot drinks machine swallowed up 2 £ coins and still didn't dispense a hot drink or refund my money. I would like to think my donation to the NHS has been appreciated.

Kittylester, where have you been for the last 10+ years?
Dentists just pretend they are part of the NHS.
I had a checkup the other day. £17.50 for less than 5 minutes, and an hour late going in.
The reason the NHS is in such a mess is because of what this govt. has been doing to it since it promised no topdown reorganisation.

Gracesmum, I'd be surprised if the money went to the NHS. Most of the catering, which includes the coffee machines, has been outsourced for years, unfortunately. These days it's quite often the company that had the PFI for the hospital.

Jendurham I don't understand your comments. My husband has worked for the NHS since he qualified. He doesn't 'pretend' to be part of the NHS, it is the government that decides patient charges. Have you considered that if you were an hour late going in to see your dentist he could have been dealing with an emergency - a matter of life and death?

The 'new contracts' for both doctors and dentists were imposed on the professions by the last government. As greatnan said, the GPs couldn't believe how good their contracts were but dentists could believe how bad their contracts were because, yet again, they are made to look as though they are money grabbing. All dentists know that the service is being privatised by the back door.

None of this alters the fact that there are huge inefficiencies in the way the PCTs are run (see above) and the fact that rationing exists because there is not enough money for everyone to have everything. What would you suggest?

I agree with most of what you say kittylester. From where I sit, there is no "THE NHS". It is already a mish-mash of obfuscated and impenetrable contracts, targets, payments by results, services within services and layers of management. Plus my NI contribution (up until I could no longer contribute at age 60) was pretty high, so my medical care didn't feel like it was free. I've just changed GP practices because after 7 years, asking for it to be explained to me, reading their many leaflets and pamphlets, I still hadn't managed to 'crack the code' for making an appointment convenient to me. Without fail - every time I called, I was told to call back, because somehow I called at the wrong time. On one occasion, the receptionist said to me 'unless you say it is an emergency, I cannot give you an appointment today'. Although I felt really ill that day, to me an emergency is ambulance and flashing blue lights. But to keep her happy, I parroted, "It is an emergency" and I got my appointment. I worked in the NHS 12 years ago (when I came to live in England having grown up in South Africa). There was a young receptionist who worked in the same clinic as me. She now has a management post in the NHS (we still meet up for coffee occasionally) at a very high salary - and she was never very bright. It is what my DH would call a 'nothing job' because when you ask her what she does, you never get a straight answer. I know she gives a lot of powerpoint presentations to groups of people. When I worked in the clinic I was gobsmacked at people starting work and within a matter of months they would be on long term sick leave for stress (this happened serveral times during the 2 years I worked there, different people). I know there are many hardworking people in the health service and mostly they provide marvellous service, just as there are good GPs, dentists etc etc but 'the NHS' is unsustainable in its current form. It needs radical reform.

The NHS does not have a current form. It has been reorganised from the top down by the Tory govt., even though it promised it would not.
Before that Tony Blair messed it up.
My mother was a nurse, and started work before the NHS came into being.
My grandfather died because they could not afford medication for him.

For years now the NHS has been sold off piecemeal to GPs and companies like Virgin, Careuk, etc.

My GP practice was part of Virgin Assura, half owned by a company called Assura a long time ago. Do not know exactly when because the details are covered by confidentiality. The new NHS was supposed to come into being this year. In fact Branson has owned over 100 practices for over 3 years.
He takes money from the NHS, then sends it overseas and does not pay tax on it, just like Amazon and Starbucks.

The difference is that this is not cups of coffee or CDs we are talking about. He is ripping off our NHS.

Look at the National Health Action Party website, and the Green Benches website to see what is happening.

The NHS was supposed to be free at the point of need. Dentists are not and haven't been for years. My husband and I were "lucky" because we had things wrong with us. All I have had on my free prescriptions have been thyroxine tablets to keep me alive.
Ken's prescription went onto 4 pages, most of it to do with his accident and subsequent bladder and bowel problems, and the fact that he had been diabetic since he was 11. If he'd had to pay for subscriptions, like many people do, even those with asthma, what would you suggest he gave up?

Last year he had two cataract operations because he was diabetic and they needed to see his retinas to check for diabetic retinopathy. They kept him waiting for 6 months between operations. The month after he had his second one they discovered a brain tumour which affected his sight, so he never did get any benefit from not having to wear glasses for the first time for over 50 years.
If he had not been diabetic, they would now expect him to just have one operation on the NHS, and pay for the other one. This obviously comes from people who have no idea what life is like only being able to see with one eye.
I had an arrow fired into my right eye on my 5th birthday. I know what it is like.
I think it's appalling that they now call hip, knee and cataract operations elective. My sister is in pain from her first hip operation, so will not have her second one done. She now walks with a stick and a limp and in pain. This operation was done in a private hospital, paid for by the NHS. When she told them she was in pain, she was told to go to the NHS hospital as she was not a private patient. There was no follow up from the operation.

jendurham you seem to feel very aggrieved about the treatment you and your family have received from the NHS. The truth is that it is totally unsustainable to have everything available to everyone nowadays.

When the NHS was set up, few of the fantastic, but expensive, advances of the past few years had been made. Various governments have sought to recoup some of the huge cost of the NHS by introducing things like charging for eye tests and part-payment of dental treatments but it is wrong of you to blame the practitioners for this.

I find your attitude aggressive and confrontational and you still haven't put forward your suggestions for reforming the NHS.

What do you suggest the NHS stops paying for?
Cancer treatment? That's expensive.
I would suggest that no woman gets fertility treatment on the NHS. The population in this country is too big as it is. I think being able to walk without pain and see out of both eyes is more important than another baby being born.
The NHS is not unsustainable. We do not pay enough into it. Only 8% of GDP whereas America pays some thing like 13% and it's a mess over there.
I am not blaming the practitioners, I am blaming this govt. and the last which have sold off the NHS to their rich friends.
Cherie Blair has set up a hedge fund to take over hearing tests. She wants 100 clinics to be set up in Sainsburys stores. Do you think that's okay?
You did not answer whether you think it's okay to have to pay for hip/knee operations and cataracts. Hearing tests are the next thing to be paid for.
You also did not say whether you think it's okay for Branson to take over as much as he has of the NHS.
Should GPs be selling out of hours practices to private companies and pocketing millions? Is that the acceptable face of the NHS sell-off?
I am not aggrieved by the treatment I described above. What I was saying was that we could not afford it if it wasn't for the NHS. In fact, if it wasn't for the NHS, Ken would have died as a teenager, instead of dying of cancer at 65.
I do not pay for eyetests any more, and my husband never did. The glasses I am wearing cost over £500 last year, because I need special lenses to balance with only being able to see out of one eye. It's the first time ever that my glasses cost more than Ken's. Didn't get any help with them either, but I will not be able to pay that again.

A good idea would be to stop the NHS paying for chaplains... surely the churches/synagogues/mosques should pay for them, freeing up millions of pounds to spend on useless things like nurses, porters and so on (</sarcasm>.

In 2009 the spend was £26,722,494. If you add in the other costs, like maintenance of chapels, prayer rooms and the like, the spend was
£48,953 per Chaplain.

Details - www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/chaplaincy-costs.pdf

I agree with that Feetlebaum. When you think the Queen is the head of the Church of England, she could quite easily pay for them. On the other hand, she could also have stopped the govt. destroying the NHS by asking Cameron et al to leave it out of the Queen's speech.
Thank you all of you who have signed my e-petition. 948 signatures, nearly 500 in the last week!
I now have more faith in British people.
10,000 and there could be a response from the govt.
100,000 and it could be debated in parliament.
Get all your friends to sign up.

The Queen can't just ask the PM to leave things out....

Why not? Constitutional crisis? Good, and about time if it happened.

Whatever you say, Jendurham.

Thank you, 950 votes now for my epetition on private healthcare companies.

No woman shoud get fertility treatment on the NHS? Did I read that right?