Can the Tories be trusted with OUR National Health Service

For those who think that taxes don't matter, there is to be a shakeup of business taxes in April.
Amazon will get a bill of £340,000 less.
The NHS will get a bill of £600 million more.
How do you think they are going to pay that? There is no separate pot for business rates. It comes out of the money to pay for frontline services.

women have to go 40 miles over narrow roads? what on earth are you on about? do they have to walk? 40 miles driving takes 20 minutes of that.

In my view "select" units do have to close. They are pretty unsustainable.

The point was that she didn't answer the question. She didn't say what you said, because she knew that the problem is that if the unit is closed women would have to travel 40 miles over narrow roads to the nearest one.
You obviously don't live in the North. The other thing is that for specialist treatment patients will have to come to Newcastle. Even the A69 has problems in the winter, a distance of over 90 miles, Workington to Newcastle.

Tomorrow's i is about maternity units.

The affected areas where maternity services are marked to shut or move substantial distances include Lancashire and South Cumbria, West Yorkshire and Harrogate, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Rutland, Birmingham and Solihull, Milton Keynes, Dorset, Coventry and Warwickshire.

Our analysis comes a week after the Royal College of Midwives’ annual report said maternity services across Britain could already reach “crisis point”, as more than a third of British midwives are nearing retirement age.

From this article

inews.co.uk/nhs/revealed-11-maternity-units-face-closure/

Fitzy we could pay a little bit more tax each (each according to their ability) and have a world class health system.
Or the better off could pay a LOT more for private health care, which will only give them partial cover. Because we don't have a network of full-service private hospitals do we. They'd still end up in NHS when the chips were down.
And the thing about private health cover is that they older you get, the more it costs.

Im not sure why a "maternity" hospital should remain one to be fair. It doesn't make sense that any particular area should have a hospital soley for one thing when it could be better served as a hospital with a maternity unit within.

Come on, fitzy, Mark Littlewood.
Behind a paywall means we can't read it unless we pay for it.
That says it all.

Theresa May was at Copeland today. She was asked four times what she thought about the maternity hospital being closed and didn't answer the question.
The NHS is a big problem in Cumbria. The next constituency north will lose three cottage hospitals. People in the area will be sent to Newcastle for any specialist treatment. But Theresa May didn't think it important enough to address.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2017/02/15/theresa-may-copeland-by-election-airbrushing-nhs-crisis-nuclear-power-moorside-gywnne_n_14766620.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics

What do you think pays for our NHS, saak?

I posted this link on another thread. It suggests there is a limit to the amount of tax the govt. can collect. Makes sense to me but I would like to hear what everyone thinks. This seems to me to be the critical issue in respect of most of the political threads.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f83a5c3e-f21b-11e6-a45f-cc1b99ad256c

?? durhamjen. It's not about tax avoidance, it's about mass, it's about too many people. How bizarre that people think this.

Get more resources. Make tax avoiders/evaders pay. Stop the cap on NI contributions.
Easy. Just needs the will.
Instead the government is cutting the number of HMRC staff to collect taxes.

It depends on what you mean by underfunding, I have no doubt whatsoever that in order to provide the services we all want we need a lot more funding. I just don't think the money is available. I wish it was. I have seen posts saying the problem with the NHS - and other issues - is underfunding "pure and simple". My take is that the the problem is that we just don't have enough money. I don't see how any govt. can possibly provide the services we want with the resources we have.

inews.co.uk/essentials/news/health/great-nhs-gamble-17m-public-funds-spent-private-consultants-save-health-service-money/

This is about my local STP.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/protestors-march-against-641m-nhs-12538059

Theresa May said she was committed to a fully funded NHS. How can she say that knowing that it was being cut?

The Specialist A&E hospital at Cramlington has already been apologising for not hitting its targets. It's been open less than a year. I had to wait for nearly two hours with my mother-in-law, 94, in the corridor on an ambulance trolley. There weren't enough staff for a handover.

A&E units for closure or downgrading in STPs.

inews.co.uk/nhs/full-list-24-aes-marked-closure/

Fitzy, where have you been?
How can asking for £22 billion in savings not be deliberate underfunding?

All this information in the i this week is as a result of an investigation by Johnson Press journalists all round the country. They have been working for months trying to find all this information and collate it.
Last week when Hunt said what was happening was unacceptable and he had a plan, this was it. It is still not supposed to be for the general public's consumption. It was thought to be too explosive.

inews.co.uk/essentials/news/health/great-nhs-gamble-investigated-important/

To balance the article about lincolnshire a bit, my area has quite a bit worse facilities than in Lincolnshire, and even with the two hospitals left open , that is still better than what we have.

I did wonder, if that is what is happening. That facilities are being looked at to come down to the level we have had here forever and a day as in always.

That said I do feel sorry for the inhabitants of Lincolnshire.

I read somewhere that SW London has 5 hospitals. 5! We should be so lucky.

Accidental lack of being able to do maths?

Why not Fitzy54 - the Tories are not that daft are they, to somehow not realise they are underfunding?

I wouldn't crtisise the govt. for trying to change things, or for using some private services where they work better, but I would agree that huge changes like this represent a huge risk. Feels like too much too quickly. I don't buy the "deliberate underfunding" claim.

inews.co.uk/nhs/nhs-crisis-19-hospitals-face-axe-as-doctors-accuse-government-of-deliberate-underfunding/

inews.co.uk/nhs/great-nhs-gamble-ae-units-risk/

inews.co.uk/essentials/news/health/great-nhs-gamble-17m-public-funds-spent-private-consultants-save-health-service-money/

inews.co.uk/nhs/came-an-nhs-nurse-to-save-lives-now-i-have-cancer-and-my-ae-is-closing/

Anyone who still thinks the NHS is safe in Tory hands should read the i this week.
Today's has all about the STPs.

Good, isn't it, Hunt saying last week that it's unacceptable, knowing that there was going to be a further loss of 2000 beds.
He's such a prat - nice word for him.

Just seen that, Jess. Why is the BBC so far behind?
We've been saying that for ages. It's a problem of splitting up the NHS into 44 separate footprints, not giving people a say in it, and not giving all the information.

Scary news on the regional plans for more "reforms" - hospital closures etc in England
inews.co.uk/nhs/nhs-crisis-19-hospitals-face-axe-as-doctors-accuse-government-of-deliberate-underfunding/

It's not specifically an NHS issue.

Absolutely true sadly.

The chart that's not on your link, Jess.

i2.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/170212-blamestorm.jpg?w=539

I saw that surgeon on the news this morning. The obvious way to stop bedblocking is to open up the wards that were closed. Lots of them.

I have said before about our local cottage hospital that had its only ward closed. They said it was because of a problem with the water tank, but a problem with a water tank should close the whole hospital not just a ward.
Anyway, in the local paper it said this week that the hospital has been taken over by the council, under registration as a community asset.
More than 5000 people signed a petition in support of it, and our MP had it discussed in the commons.