NHS winter crisis looms

She's not listening to the medical profession and public, which may end up being her downfall as people feel very passionate about NHS. There is a prog on BBC2 tonight about what it's like at the front line of health service, "Hospital" 9pm.

Time for a revolution sisters, brothers, comrades??

Still waiting for a reply from my MP Chris White.

During the last election, people did NOT put the NHS top of their list; it is always "failing" and people are more interested in the Economy.

Oh I thought that the main issue was immigration

Jalima
You make many good points about the problems of the NHS. Its certainly not simple. To some extent its been a victim of success, there now being many very expensive rugs available for patients with cancer, diabetes, AMD (lucentis at £800 a shot), and others. All this eats heavily into the budget.

Labour screwed up the GPs contracts so they are costing more and working less (our GPs are very well paid!)

Closing or downgrading of A&Es (we are facing the latter in my town too) is an attempt to centralise costly services and make efficiency savings, at a time when demand is increasing, in part from foreign migrants who havent even registered witha doctor.

What we have is perfect storm where these things coincide with the ageing and increasing use of the NHS by the baby boom bulge, while the longer living and now frail older generation 80s and 90s are surviving a little longer (few in number but very costly) and then the final pressure is mass immigration, a hugely swelling population, coupled with abuse of the NHS by foreign 'health tourists'.

Its no single cause as WW suggests(???) but a combination of clouds gathering.

Correction drugs not rugs!!!

I was being facetious mair But even if I'd been serious you misunderstood my reply.

fullfact.org/health/health-tourism-whats-cost/

Nothing like enough to cause the problems you suggest, mair.
0.3% really worrying.

fullfact.org/europe/eu-immigration-and-pressure-nhs/

fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-and-nhs-staff/

Could you perhaps stop blaming immigration?

www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/verdict/what-do-we-know-about-impact-immigration-nhs

Kings Fund might be more to your taste. Unfortunately the figures make your case worse.

May is probably banking on a holding pattern until it eases with the better weather.

*Nothing like enough to cause the problems you suggest, mair.
0.3% really worrying.*

I did not attempt to put an apportionment of 'blame' to the various contributory factors DJ, but as I have already explained, 'Full Facts' is not an unbaised website.

The figures are only estimates and distorted because the 0.3% you have selected is the figure estimated for "deliberate " health tourism as opposed to those health tourists who claim they actually came here for their granddaugters wedding and just happened to develop a cough, which turned out to be TB (for example). The total cosst is 1.8 BILLION a year.

Of course it is Britains own 'fault' that we fail to reclaim much of that money from the EU or from non EU tourists. This is a side effect of a 'free' healthcare system whhich simply doesnt have the substantial admin staff in every hospital who would be needed to reclaim these monies from overseas. It would help if ALL foreign visitors were obliged to have health insurance.

Agreed Mair that our hospitals should have been claiming back money, from foreign nationals, all other countries make sure that they do, so the system should have been set up for us to do it as well. perhaps it will do so in the near future.

But of course it's non-PC to suggest that anyone comes to the UK for free NHS treatment so I doubt whether anything will be done about it in the future.

We can but hope! Every little helps.

You're a bit behind the times, roses

£289m
charged for treating
overseas visitors in
2015-16, including a
new immigration health
surcharge for students
and temporary migrants

www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Recovering-the-cost-of-NHS-treatment-for-overseas-visitors.pdf

From what we are hearing though, there are a lot not charged at all......
But if this new charge is getting some money from visitors in the last year, then that's good.

I suppose that depends on where you're hearing it, roses

Radio 4 discussion the other week.

I realise it's a drop in the ocean that is needed to keep the NHS afloat, but it still all needs to be collected.

"From what we are hearing though, there are a lot not charged at all..."

Indeed. A S.Afican of English descent told me her SA/English migrant friends who all came back here to have their babies because healthcare in SA is not what it was, were fully expecting to be billed (and quite willing to pay), but this simply never happened.

The situation within the EU is dire too:

New figures (march 2016) show the NHS is paying out millions more for EU healthcare than it is claiming back from EU countries.

news.sky.com/story/nhs-scandal-as-uk-pays-millions-to-eu-10189381

In what one MP described as a "scandalous failure", it has emerged that the UK pays more than £670m to EU countries for Brits' healthcare abroad, while claiming back less than £50m from the EU, even though there are significantly more EU citizens in the UK than UK citizens in the EU

The new figures reveal that nearly every country claims more from the UK than the UK claims back from the rest of the EU

Even in countries such as Poland where net migration is massively towards the UK, the discrepancy is four-fold in Poland's favour.

MP John Mann, who obtained the figures in a parliamentary question, told Sky News that "logically the UK should be receiving more than it pays out

That was dated March 2016.

We are addressing the problem today. Anyone would think that it is the EU and the EU alone is responsible for the problems faced by the NHS . Even roses realises it's a drop in the ocean.

We all know your agenda mair but it doesn't help it's cause by such tenuous arguments

We all know your agenda mair

"We all"?
Who has authorised you to speak for them WW?

What 'agenda' are you implying I have?
My comments are purely to challenge and expose nonsense.
To suggest that foreigner usage of the NHS and Britains failure to collect payments is not a problem is a nonsense.

"but it doesn't help it's cause by such tenuous arguments"

DJs figure is misleading and gives a very incomplete picture.
March 2016 is less than a year ago. The situation has not changed substantially since then.

Unfortunately most of the information we get about the NHS has to be dragged out through FOI requests. Anything the government doesn't want us to know is covered by commercial confidentiality.
I know. I've tried for years as have lots of people in many of the groups I belong to.
At least if it's 2015 figures, it's quite often the most up-to-date you can get, and the government cannot blame the Labour party for this mess, as they changed the system in 2013.
Lots of times not only have they changed the system, they've also changed the system of collecting statistics, so they are not directly comparable.

What do you say about the King's Fund article, mair?

In 2010 I said (on GN amongst other places) that the NHS was at that moment better than it had ever been and better than it was ever likely to be again.
Obsessing about foreigners and payments is a complete red herring and a tiny drop in the ocean of the NHS budget.
The problem is caused by 6 years of Jeremy Hunt (and Tory austerity). They knew perfectly well that demand was going to rise steadily. They would appear to have created this crisis deliberately and not by mere incompetence.