NHS winter crisis looms

Not sure whether this will work... shows some of the problems with the French system?
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Anya it would not be "blaming" baby boomers - but it would be true to say that the increase in birth rate in the post war is starting to hit the health service - along with the greatly increased longevity of those who were born before and during the war.
And yes "Antonia" the extra 1000EU each sounds like piddling around to me. We get a very similar service here (the things you list - including free prescriptions for older people, kids, Welsh people etc) without messing about with extra payments. We've done it through the taxation system for over 60 years and it has worked fine thanks.
Means tested contributions etc sounds like a massive paper chase - we already get taxed according to our income. Why complicate it? I think you are making the French system sound like a job creation scheme for civil servants.
The problem is that politicians in power are against tax rises to pay for increased need. They prefer to give tax cuts in the hopes of getting voted in again.

We do have a means tested sliding scale. It's called tax.

Then why not have sliding scale, means tested top up contributions, with those who can't afford it paying nothing? I think everyone agrees that something has to be done with the NHS, and why would most people object to contributing if the result was an excellent health service?

indeed anya all those selfish old people cluttering up the surgeries.

I think that very poor people get their health care costs covered by the state here in France.
Nursing home costs here are much the same as UK and once a person has used their resources - having sold their homes etc - the children have to pay the bill.

You forgot baby boomers Gill

No Antonia, Your kind of thinking is just what the government want us all to do. We already pay for our health care through NIC and the more people spend their own money on operations/queue jumping then the more it will get pushed through as a way forward. We need to bite the bullet and raise the additional funds through taxation and not piddling about with invoicing so called health tourists either. And someone tell the Daily Mail that the problems with the NHS are down to lack of investment, not the fault of refugees/immigrants/fat people/smokers/benefit cheats.

Antonio Sounds ok until you realise that some people are scraping by (jams) and definitely couldn't afford equivalent of €2,000 to top up health care. Some don't even know where their next meal is coming from. What is more, including private contributions, France spends more per GDP on health care, around 10%, whereas in UK it is about 9% including private contributions.

Sorry, Rosesarered, I wasn't very clear. The €2000 a year covers both of us.

No couple here (unless well off) would contemplate spending £4000 per year, although if somebody were to want to see a consultant quickly, they may fork out £200 or so.

Why can't the NHS be run like the system we have here in France? My DH and I pay roughly €2000 a year and for that we get a superb service which includes doctor's visits, prescriptions and hospital care. Maternity is also covered; a friend of ours recently had a baby and during her pregnancy she had home visits from 2 midwives, plus after birth visits. In the UK my DD paid around £8000 for this kind of care from a private agency. This system also involves hundreds of jobs processing payments. 70% of healthcare is state funded and the rest is covered by 'top up' payments that we pay to a medical insurance company. We would happily pay this in the UK if it meant that we were assured of an excellent service. Is this too much to ask in the UK or would introducing such a system be political suicide?

The Daily Mail are running a headline that says something along the lines of "Put our old people first - not the foreign aid budget"
So let's blame the refugees instead of Attilla the Hunt.

It seemed a fairly sensible idea, except that I was in pain!
They try to ascertain if it is a stroke or heart attack in which case an ambulance would be sent urgently, or a first response paramedic.

skwawkbox.org/2016/10/31/proof-govts-nhs-desperate-measures-planned-since-at-least-2010/

Not just England, Northern Ireland as well. Wales and Scotland are devolved.

skwawkbox.org/2016/12/12/ni-portrait-in-miniature-of-tory-nhscare-predations/

It was planned as far back as 2010, by McKinsey.

This is to do with GP commissioning in England is it? Another one of Hunt's (we're not going to have a top down reorganisation) triumphs.
Fortunately in Wales we didn't have that and neither are we going to have more council tax rises to cover care. The Welsh government had a massive funding cut. Universities are all had a chunk cut from their budget, which will inevitably lead to redundancies. LAs have had cuts and there will be libraries closing etc etc etc. But the Welsh government has decided to protect health and social care.

If you phone for an ambulance here you have to wait for a nurse to do a triage assessment over the phone who then decides whether or not it is urgent.
Apparently a broken ankle is not urgent, so then you have to wait again for an ambulance.

Referral by GPs to hospital is no longer in their hands. Even in acute cases in most places now they have to go via A&E or to an Assessment Unit prior to admission, including children. As dj says an ordinary hospital referral by GP has to be assessed by committee to see if in their opinion the patient's referral is appropriate or if they can be fobbed off advised on alternative treatment. Under the guise of efficiency it's a big money saving exercise.

It's supposedly a way to save money, Anya. Obviously we need to save more up here because we're all fat smokers who don't know what the NHS is for. Our GPs aren't capable of making resoned decisions, either. If they were, they wouldn't be up here!

Cynical? Me?

And yes, it was serious enough for her to need to stay in for two nights. Having said that a 7-year old had died the previous year after being seen by two local GPs and told there was nothing to worry about at A & E, so perhaps this was a wake up call.

Talk about differences across the country

When GD1 was taken to GP running high temp. he rang up the Children's Ward at the local hospital and told them he was sending her for immediate admittance.

I fell down the stairs, Anya, and sat on the landing for half an hour waiting for my son to come home - it was at his house, and I was there to take my granddaughter to a performance.
The pain had subsided a bit in that half hour, so I was hoping it wasn't broken, which is why we phoned the GP first.
Actually, it's worse now, because if a GP tells you to go to hospital it now has to go to a private committee who then decide whether you need to go to hospital.
You'd better hope this does not work up here, because if it does, it will be rolled out all over the country.

Do you remember the programme where GPs went round the country asking people about medical problems? One of the GPs on there was George Rae, from Tynemouth or Whitley Bay.
He had referred a patient to hospital because of a problem with her skin. It went to this committee, who turned it down. Rae complained and it took six months for the patient to see a skin specialist, when it was pronounced to be cancer. The patient had a much more extensive problem and operation than she would have needed if it hadn't been for this committee.

Goodness things are bad up there DJ if you can't just turn up at A&E for an emergency.

Yup the counties and cities with the greatest need for publicly funded social care are those are of course the poorest boroughs. (More poverty = less ability to pay for your own care) The residents of those boroughs, are of course least able to pay the big council tax increases.
All for the Tory holy grail of keeping income tax down for those in upper income tax brackets. (Along with the hope that people will blame their (Labour) councils for the rises).
While spouting about how much she cares for the "just managing" Hunt and May are deliberately and viciously attacking the poorest.