Can the Tories be trusted with OUR National Health Service

WW

I took the time to read it.

You gave with one hand and took back with the other when you again challenged my words by saying.

'So no, staff are not wasting their time'

That is your opinion, I have stated mine.

Yes I recognised the issue in my post if you had taken the time to read it properly.

"At the Royal Liverpool, a paramedic waiting in the early hours for his next call attests to the scale of the problem. “A lot of people coming in now have been found drunk in the centre,” he says. “They’ve had accidents, got into fights or, most likely, drunk so much they just can’t control themselves. Often they don’t need A&E help – they just need to sleep it off. But then they’re drunk so they don’t know what they need and just call us.”

That kind of misuse of the emergency services has become a huge issue. “A lot of people treat the ambulance like a free cab service,” says Ged Blezard, director of emergency services for the North West Ambulance Service, citing a man in Manchester who rang to ask if he could book an ambulance for 11.45 in case he needed one due to drinking too much.

“We definitely have our ‘regulars’,” says the paramedic outside the Royal Liverpool, who asks to remain anonymous. “You can often guess from the area who it’s going to be and we’re on first-name terms with them. They get absolutely hammered every weekend and that’s normal for them.”

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/02/alcohol-accident-emergency-keep-drunk-people-out-of-hospital

pogs That seems a tad overreaction. I simply said as I experienced. And suggested that you post needed perspective not that it was untrue.

OK WW

I must be lying.

It is underfunding pure and simple.

www.taxpayersalliance.com/nhs_pensions_are_bleeding_the_taxpayer_dry
The 2015 accounts show a NHS pensions liability of £382 billion.
The scheme is pay as you go with any surplus being paid back into the treasury it has no assets.
The accounts are online to view at:
www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/Documents/Pensions/56324_NHS_Pension_Scheme_HC_370_Web_only_(2015-16_accounts).pdf

The blame game should stop, it's not the elderly, not the drunks etc.

Well pogs I think your post needs a bit of perspective. Yes drunks are a pain in the ass, and in my opinion need a slap. But patients are triaged on entry. Both DH and myself had heart episodes last year. DH far worse. But we took priority over everyone else. At one stage it was difficult to count the amount of staff around my husband each clearly having a job to do. This will apply to any life threatening or serious problem. So no, staff are not wasting their time. I live in a large university city. However whether there are questions and decisions to be made regarding certain types of illness presenting at A&E is another issue.

Rigby

'of course I appreciate there is an issue with inappropriate use of the NHS but drunks are not seen by health care staff if there is no injury'

"Seriously ill patients are not waiting to be seen whilst a drunk is being prioritised"

I was speaking from experience Rigby and I can assure you the time wasting by those under the influence of whatever are a bloody nuisance and they expected the staff to attend to them and did not consider what was going on around them, they were ' out of it', not able to think rationally due to the drink or drugs. If A & E staff are having to deal with those who abuse the A & E it stands to reason, stating the obvious, other patients in A & E are being deprived of the time from those staff.

I consider a nurse holding a sick bowl for somebody who is drunk, a nurse looking at a cut that requires a plaster the size of a stamp an abuse of the NHS. The physical and verbal abuse our medics have to deal with is atrocious.

We will beg to differ but have you been to a large city center A & E on a busy night, it is an eye opener.

Jen those in govt. schemes have to contribute a lot because of the massive cost. Anyone in a private scheme (if they had any sense) would bite their employer's hand off for a similar deal. One immediate and complete fix for the NHS would be to swap its budget with the govt. pensions budget. A lot of pensions would take a huge hit but the NHS would be awash with cash. I'm not seriously suggesting that as a solution, but I'm just putting things into perspective. Complain about the Tories all you like, but they have a lot of bills to pay!

No, No, No

Joelsnan I can't disprove your hypothesis any more than you can prove it. We'll just have to agree that you believe it and I don't. Or I should say, I do believe that the govt. wants to find the most efficient way of providing free and adequate healthcare to us all, and that they do see the private sector as having a role to play, partially because, in some cases, it's cheaper. I think they are right. I also think, and believe the govt. agree, that public sector controlled services are often the best way to go.

The general public does not pay it all, though.
Anyone working in teaching, NHS, local authority pays towards their pension. It can be as much as 10-12% in superannuation.
How many people working for private companies put that much aside for their pensions?

I'm not saying the govt. did publicise it before Corbyns sweetheart speech, nor am I convinced it was a sweetheart deal. But it's out in the open now and, presumably, generally available.

Fitzy54 So you are convinced my hypothesis is not true, can you counter claim?
If you acknowledge to probability of my hypothesis being proven then the process does make sense. This is the same process that is taking place throughout organisations that could be deemed Civil Service, even though some organisations are effective effective the majority have either been sold off to private concerns (think Royal Mail) or have outsourced the majority of services to divest pension liability.
Thinking about it then yes why should the general public pay the generous pensions of Civil Servants (NHS) when the have already paid their salaries and have to fund their own pension pots. But, it is shown that in many instances the service delivery of these outsourced organisation is poorer than the Civil Service providers.
Personally I cannot see privatisation being cheaper, yes these organisations will provide their employees a decent wage and a pension, though a poorer pension than the NHS, but the share dividends to investors has to be factored in so at end of the day the NHS or whoever still ends up paying more.

Jeremy Hunt has at last admitted that there is a problem with the NHS.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/10/nhs-problems-completely-unacceptable-admits-jeremy-hunt/

Hasn't said what the solution is, though, other than sending people with dementia back into the community. It has to be long-term and sustainable, the buzz-word of the decade.

Fitzy, none of the other councils knew about this deal with the government until Corbyn brought it up in PMQs. This is interesting from Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/09/surrey-council-tax-referendum-david-hodge-cuts

If the government had given this deal to all councils, do you not think it would have been front page news?

Joelsnan - if what you say is true, which I'm sure it isn't, why would it be wrong to save huge amounts of NHS funds from being channelled into expensive DB pensions? Public pensions soak up more govt. money than anything else.

Whilst we are all blaming the young, the old, the immigrant for the failings for the NHS, the core issue is the government's intention is to continue with the privatisation of health services.
I consider that a major factor in this ideology is to divest the pension liability that the NHS has. It is said that the NHS is/was one of the highest volume employers in Europe. The pension/superannuation scheme is vast and expensive. By outsourcing services new employees would be enrolled in the private providers scheme thereby reducing the burden on NHS.
The government knows that industrial action would arise if this was common knowledge so use other blaming strategies to get the populous on their side to continue the privatisation drive.

Just saw CEO of Manchester Health and Social Care on TV. He says they have over £6bn in grant from govt. and seemed to be saying they are coping unite well apart from the need for more help in moving elderly people from hospital beds to a safe environment when they can be discharged. He said they need £76m more, which didn't seem much to me in the context of a £6bn budget, but clearly critical. The new money released from council tax will generate £9m for them.

joelsnan however many younger immigrants you have or don't have, it does not alter the basic fact that at the moment, year on year, there are more elderly people needing more care. However many younger people there are, the raw number of older people is climbing quite rapidly.
Even if we had a perfect system for discharging people from hospital (and I agree we are a long, long way from that) there would still be more people every year having cancer, having falls, having pneumonia etc. Therefore demand at the front door of an NHS hospital will get bigger than the year before, every year, for the next few decades, and then stay high for about another decade or so, before it starts to decline a bit.
Immigration helps the NHS because we need more young working people paying taxes to pay for all this healthcare.

Jen - thanks for the explanation. I now understand what the professor was saying. But from what I have read (not that much i admit) all councils have the same opportunity to do what Surrey are doing, or at least to participate in what I think is at this stage a pilot scheme?

www.independent.co.uk/voices/pmqs-labour-councils-sweetheart-deal-surrey-theresa-may-austerity-a7571156.html

If the Tories treated all councils the way they are treating Surrey, it would help the NHS as a whole.
If all councils were allowed to keep their business rates it would add up to a lot of help for social care, which would help the NHS.

However, I don't trust the Tory government to do this.

It was abolished as it stood. It was linked to the social care system, and the secretary of state was not held responsible any more. He no longer has a duty to provide an NHS. I was in hospital the day it was brought in. No accident that it was April Fool's Day.
Now with the STPs it is no longer going to be national.

Allyson Pollock helped to write the reinstatement bill which is going to be debated on 24th February.