Is the NHS safe in Tory (or Labour) hands

I find this very sinister.
When the idea of care.data was first brought in we were told we could opt out of sharing our information with companies such as insurance and private healthcare. It now appears that if you did that, it might not be possible to have bowel cancer tests or prescriptions online. This sounds like blackmail to me.

pulsetoday.msgfocus.com/c/12gjftglUX4emXIhc82ikYRw

A debate on 21st January, asking for an extra £2.5 billion for the NHS.

That this House
notes comments from leading experts that the NHS is under unprecedented levels of pressure and that this is putting patient care at risk;
further notes that attendances at hospital A&E departments increased by 60,000 in the last four years of the previous Government and 600,000 in the first four years of the current Government;
believes that this is linked to decisions taken by this Government, including cuts to adult social care, the abolition of NHS Direct, the closure of almost one in four walk-in centres and removing the GP access guarantee; and
calls on the Government to match the Labour Party’s plans to raise an extra £2.5 billion a year for the NHS, funded by measures including a tax on properties worth over £2 million, to help ease the current pressure and ensure that the NHS is fit for the future.

All Tory and Libdem voted against it, except for one Libdem MP. If Libdems had voted with Labour it would have been passed.
That's the first time I have seen such a direct comparison of A&E figures.

I think that the NHS is patchy. Some areas and hospitals seem to be brilliant, others are appalling, in Wales too.

Hinchinbrooke Hospital, by many accounts, was doing well until this report by people with hidden motives; if you start fining hospitals then funding for the patients will be cut which seems to me to be self-defeating.

It doesnt bode well when they struggle to get it right in Wales.

The last Labour government has a history of shame regarding the NHS and unfortunately the present Labour MPs consist of mainly the same people.
I don't know how they can look people in the eye and claim to be the saviours of the NHS.

As the title of this thread is 'Is the NHS safe in Tory (or Labour) hands?' I think any information is useful, whatever source it comes from - as you say, rosequartz, we have plenty of Guardian and BBC links putting one point of view forward.

A 'more up to date report', just for durhamjen!

Ed turns blind eye to labour's dismal NHS record in Wales

You state that the DM is biased Djen. They do seem to dig out the truth and do appear to be on the side of patients. So if being on the side of patients displays bias, then yes, they are.

Would you claim that the Guardian, whose links you use fairly frequently, is unbiased?

I read both and have used links from both, so have no axe to grind.

Civil servants pitch in and work extra unsocial hours too when there is a need (at least we did).
Most people refer to it as 'overtime'.

Durhamjen, in the private sector people pitch in regularly if there is a rush for some reason or other.
Actually, what happens more often in small businesses, is that staff know not to even bother asking for time off in busy periods. They know when they apply for jobs there, or else are told, that it will not be possible to have your holidays in August, or December or whatever. It is routine.

durhamjen

I don't follow what you are saying.

Why are you saying Ana has put forward a link to something out of date. Your post of Jan 20. 00.11 doesn't make sense. What point do you not understand Labour runs the NHS in Wales and it is not fairing any better than England and has no right to persist in the lie Labour is the Saviour of the NHS.

Is this also out of date information in your opinion.

A&E waiting times Nov/Dec 2014

England 92.6%
Scotland 93.5%
Wales 83.8%
N. Ireland 80.5%

Norman Smith from the BBC was interviewing Jeremy Hunt re e.mails from viewers and gave him right old stick. Then when the interview was over he said "To be fair most e.mails were in support of the NHS".

A & E waiting times Dec / Jan 2014/2015

England 89.8%
Scotland - awaiting their figures
Wales 81%
N. Ireland 76.7%

You are on a hide to nowhere if you and the Labour Party continue to poke the finger of blaim at the coalition government only.

As Miliband has stated Labour wants to 'WEAPONISE' the NHS . personally I think that's been going on for the entire term it has been out of powerpower by Labour and by it's supporters.

The NHS is suffering from many problems that would be happening under any government of any colour. The NHS has horror stories under past and present governments. The NHS will continue to have positive/ negative reports under any future government because it is trying to knock a square peg in a round hole.

An example, there has been an increase of 20.000 people A WEEK going through A & E doors in 2014 . The equivalent of requiring 9 extra hospitals.

It is also a fact some NHS Authorities have coped better than others .

By the way with regard to your question concerning any other jobs having their days off and leave cancelled the answer is yes. My hubby was a policeman and it happened on a regular basis. Demonstrations, football games etc. etc. It was and probably is now 'how it is'. There was no point in moaning if you didn't accept it then you left the job.

An example would be the Kegworth Air disaster, ambulance, fire, police, hospitals even AA patrol men gave their time without thinking of money nor time so it does happen in other professions. I think it's a sense of duty and knowing you are the only ones who can deal with it that makes such people special .

I agree it is not sustainable day in day out on a permanent basis so it will be interesting to see if things calm down now doctors surgeries have reopened from the Xmas period but there are so many factors that can contribute to the problems facing the NHS .

It's this month, but 1st January, which means last year. All I was saying is that there are more up-to-date articles about the Welsh NHS., and from something not quite as biased as the DM.

I agree the CQC should be looked into as a whole. I note the DM article about Hinchingbrooke did not mention that David Prior was the chairman.
That needs looking into, as do all the governing body, and their connections with private healthcare.

Djen I thought you meant that ana had linked something from years ago that was out of date, in fact it is a current report - latest findings!

Reinforce Offa's Dyke - keep those conspirators Djen mentions out!
All is top notch with education and the NHS in Wales! It's all a big lie!

Of course, some who live here may think differently.
They may notice that the NHS budget has not only not been protected, it has been cut by the Labour government.

Meanwhile, across the border in England:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2913987/Labour-s-private-hospital-stitch-Shocking-evidence-Left-sabotaged-NHS-success-story.html

but it is not a political football - it's just "Labour's main card".

Could you not find something more up-to-date, Ana?
Like this from the BBC on Saturday?

"However, the health minister defended how the service in Wales was treated, amid criticism that NHS budgets have not been given the same protection as those in England.

Mr Drakeford said the approach in Wales meant that social care budgets had benefited, and as a result no hospital A&E department in Wales had been forced to close its doors due overwhelming patient demand - unlike some hospitals in England recently.

"We have been able to work with our social services colleagues, working incredibly hard with us to discharge people from our hospitals, find beds for them in care homes and nursing homes," insisted the minister.

He said attacks on the Welsh NHS came from people across the border who were "only interested in making political capital from it"."

Meanwhile, Labour's woeful NHS record in Wales continues...

Labour's mismanagement of NHS in Wales

A&E in Kent in trouble. Is it right that all the staff have to cancel days off and holidays in order to make it work?
Are people in other jobs expected to do the same?

www.kentnews.co.uk/news/kent_s_a_es_in_crisis_1_3919995

The last twice I have been in A&E [admittedly accompanying very elderly people], my experience has been the same as jjolz1954. The usual cut finger, knock on head etc on the whole younger or middle aged people. Scarcely an elderly person in sight.
And our area is known for having a largely elderly population.
But all areas are different. So perhaps no one that doesnt work in these places, and different areas of the country, can give a true overall picture of the country as regards a&E.

No it isn't.

joolz read the consultants letter and you will realize that it is only the politicians singling particular people out.

Personally, I am tired of watching the news and seeing that A+ E departments are overwhelmed with “the elderly” who then become bed blockers. The naive may be forgiven for thinking that coaches have been laid on for “the elderly” to take them to A+E for an outing and leaving them there.
Recent government DATA has shown that nearly a million extra people visited A+E in one year purely and simply because they were unable to get a GP appointment in a reasonable time. The DATA didn’t show that the million people were the coach loads of elderly looking for an afternoon out.
While I accept that we have an aging population with increasingly complex medical needs, we also have a general public with high expectations who are bombarded with health information to seek medical advice. The worried individual, who cannot get a GP appointment for a week or two, can find themselves in A+E, just to be safe. The much trumpeted 111 number frequently refers the enquirer onto medical advice, which if it’s out of hours, is the local A+E. and if you have a child who is sick, and your surgery is closed, what should you do? 111 will refer you to A+E so you might as well go straight there. There are also the hoards of alcohol related injuries most nights. There is also the blame culture that insists that the minor accident at school or work needs checking out, just to be sure.
In the past couple of years, I have twice had personal experience of A+E. once was a bank holiday when my mother broke her hip (she fell when getting onto the coach full of elderly bed blockers…..I’m joking) and secondly when I fell and broke my wrist. Looking around the department, I wasn’t surrounded by these elderly bed blockers. There were some elderly people there but most patients were under pension age. On my last visit, sitting in the post triage area, I saw a twenty something woman on crutches and a bandaged foot, a workman, still in his work gear with a bloodied hand, a young lad with a bleeding nose, escorted by two policeman, several teens sitting morosely, three broken wrists/arms (I was one of them), a drunk with a black eye, and a large number of under 65’s just sitting there with no obvious issue.
Throwing money at the NHS encourages more of the same. It is a service bleeding from a thousand cuts, both funding but also from poor management and waste. There is no single cause or solution for our ailing NHS. So please, let’s stop singling out particular groups of people and laying the blame at their door

About there being a lack of medical staff; that can at least in part be attributed to bad planning. In the 90s, it was known that the Working Time Directive was coming and so it would not be possible to make doctors work as some used to in my young days, 90 or 100 hours a week. It was also obvious, once medical students were being accepted on academic results and not with gender quotas, that there would be a far greater proportion of women. Because of simple biology, there was going to be a greater need for maternity leave. Then at least some of the medically-qualified mothers were going to want to take a career break and/or work part-time. Then some of the men were going to think that they would like a better work/life balance too, and why not?

As politicians mostly have their eyes set on the next election, at most 5 years away, they are not very good at long-term planning, and the money which would have been required to increase the intake at medical schools was not as high a priority as it should have been. Therefore we are importing doctors to work out-of-hours shifts and parts of the NHS are staffed on a hand-to-mouth basis.

As for nurses, I wonder if the widespread use of 12-hour shifts has made many leave the profession - I don't think I could have done such a physically- and mentally-demanding job for 12 hours at a time until retirement.

I'm fed up with the idea, pushed hard in the time of the dreaded Margaret Thatcher, that paying tax is a bad thing and something that we all want to avoid. I was delighted when I was able to earn enough to pay tax and consider it to be a way of contributing to society. It makes me very cross that the Lib Dems have arranged for the personal allowance to go up and up and so the amount I earn would not qualify for income tax if it weren't that I now get my pension. I haven't handed over my certificate to my employer and so continue to pay a small amount of NI as a rebellion. (Fortunately we are not reliant on my pay and so can afford to do so; I realise that it isn't a choice for everyone.)

Personally, I would be happy to pay more tax if it were going to the NHS and not, as Iam64 says, to wars in the Middle East or to replacing Trident.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/real-root-ae-crisis-lies-far-beyond-wards

janea in answer to your last paragraph, no I would not charge them extra because they are paying national insurance anyway if they work and contributing.

However, I thought that part of the NI stamp went to help pay in some small measure for the NHS and, after retirement, we cease to pay a NI stamp at all.
I see no reason why a pensioner should not continue to pay the proportion of the NI which goes to fund the NHS which I understand is about 2% - if their income is above a certain level that is.

If we were living in a country without a free NHS we would be paying a very large proportion of our income in health insurance.

What I would like is for the political parties just to state very clearly what their plans for the NHS are and how they plan to finance it in detail, so we can decide who to vote for. This constant shouting at each other on the subject (see H of P on the news today) is unedifying and gets us nowhere.

I have always been against contracting out services in the NHS - it totally misses the point of the concept of "service." But I guess we are too far down that road now to turn back easily.

Targets are all very well but underlying them is an assumption that workers in the NHS/ambulance service etc require these in order to function efficiently - it is really quite insulting. Most people who go into these public services do so with a sense of vocation and desire to help others. This sort of target-setting is almost insulting to them. And it encourages a sort of game-playing to get round those rules, which is counter-productive and makes everyone feel uncomfortable.

The personal and psychological aspects of working in health care are assets that are sidelined and undervalued. So many staff are beaten down by all this nonsense and lose all job satisfaction. These aspects are as important as money. If only the "planners" sitting round their tables coming up with ideas that look good on paper could think at a human level, things might get better.