Can the Tories be trusted with OUR National Health Service

FarNorth - distinguished as prof pollock may be, she is clearly talking rubbish. Sounds more like a grandstanding politician than a serious academic. "The NHS in England was abolished., ". Truly pathetic!
Jen - the Guardian article is worrying. i can't see how aGP practice can efficiently operate an NHS surgery and a private practice surgery. You just know the former will take second place.

Instead of just suggesting that pensioners pay a reduced rate of NI, shouldn't we question the whole basis of NI as it now stands? It's fundementally just another tax now as NI benefits are so much more restricted than they used to be so the rationale for levying it on employees/ employers it could be argued has largely disappeared ( I know the state pension is linked to it but even that has undergone revision). Some people think it should be rolled up into income tax in some way.

POGs - 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( although their presence can be a nuisance). I've been to a&we twice in the last 3 years and there was very strict triage through a nurse practitioner. After that, you were routed to a doctor or to a nurse as appropriate and in either case and quite rightly, prioritised within that route. Seriously ill patients are not waiting to be seen whilst a drunk is being prioritised. What is happening is that patients are waiting to be allocated a bed on a ward not because the beds are full of drunks but because those patients fit to be discharged can't be because of the crisis in social care funding. As for charging drunks/ drug abusers for their treatment , how on earth would that happen practically? Staff resources would have to be used to bill them, then follow up non- payment, then what if they did not have sufficient resources to pay for their treatment? And what would you do with a badly injured driver whose accident was caused by drink or drugs? And ill equipped walkers injured falling down a mountainside? I''m not saying things can't be improved - all organisations can be - but with health services, it's really complicated when you actually start to think how it would be operationalised.

From Monday’s edition of Good Morning Scotland, which featured an interview with Professor Allyson Pollock, an extremely experienced academic in the field of healthcare on both sides of the border - Professor Pollock states that the NHS in England has been abolished.

Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 6 February 2017 :
HAYLEY MILLAR (BBC SCOTLAND): How do the [English and Scottish NHS] systems, or services, compare?
PROF. POLLOCK: Well, I think there’s a very important background message to this story, which is that the NHS in England was abolished by the Health And Social Care Act in 2012.
So what’s happening is that in England the NHS is now rapidly being dismantled and privatised – both the delivery and opened up to user charges and changes in funding. And that has a big impact for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which still have their NHS.
Because the funding for the NHS in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales comes through something called the Barnett Formula. So we already have a problem, because Scotland is going to suffer under the Barnett Formula – known as the Barnett squeeze – so the amount of money that it gets from the Treasury is being reduced.
But also, as the NHS is being dismantled in England, funding is being withdrawn from both the NHS and social care, which means that that translates into the Barnett Formula into a real reduction in funding for the countries that still have a national health service.
Nevertheless, Scotland is still much better placed than England – and indeed Wales at the moment – Scotland is in a much stronger position than England with respect to both health and social care. The problem is at the moment that the English government is not committed to a national health service – it has abolished the national health service.
The Secretary of State for Health there has no duty to provide a national health service in England, so the money is now being withdrawn from the National Health Service in England.
And as it’s withdrawn from England, the Treasury at the same time is also withdrawing the funding from Scotland.
Now, Scotland still has a national health service, but if it’s going to retain a proper national planned health service, it does indeed require more funding to come in. But that ultimately is going to be a Treasury decision.
MILLAR: Except we saw the Scottish Government, didn’t we, Allyson Pollock, last week in the budget, saying that there would be more money for the NHS.
POLLOCK: Well, that’s true, but there’s only a limit as to what it can do with the pot of money that it gets from the Treasury, and that is being squeezed, because basically, the Scottish Government gets what’s called a block grant from the Treasury under the fiscal settlement, but it has very little power to alter the size of that grant. It can only move the budget around, as it were – it’s got very limited tax-raising powers.
So actually, we… whatever happens in England, and the dismantling is happening very rapidly, if you think there’s a crisis in Scotland it’s nothing like what’s going on – and I’m here south of the border, both at times in London and in Newcastle – it’s nothing like the scale of the devastation that’s being now wrought in England.
Which is why we need the NHS in England restored, so that then the politicians south of the border will be committed to an NHS, and then the funding will come back in.
---
An audio recording of this clip can be found at: wingsoverscotland.com/a-division-of-principles/

fullfact.org/health/spending-english-nhs/

Someone accused whitewave of being biased.

Surely anyone who expresses an opinion is biased? Why is it that those who say the NHS is safe in Conservative hands, or it is not their fault that it is in a mess, do not see themselves as biased?

whitewave, JessM and many others have backed up their opinions about the danger to the NHS with some very pertinent facts and figures. Sarah Woolaston, a Conservative MP, also said last year that the figures being quoted regarding NHS funding are misleading:

"you can only arrive at the £10 billion by shifting money from public health budgets and health education and training and also by changing the date with which you calculate real-term increases."

She is a doctor and probably has a good deal more experience and knowledge of past and current policies and their effects.

It seems that the majority of consultants and other medical and nursing staff working in the NHS are agreed that a major issue is the lack of social care provision. This has arisen because of the swingeing cuts in council budgets. So, with a decreased amount going into hospitals added to the reduction in after-care/convalescent provision, it is no wonder that the NHS is in chaos. Indeed, the Conservatives were opposed to the system from its inception.

My experience is that there have always been people who have misused A&E. I recall visiting A&E in Colchester with one of my children in or around 1986 when a woman came in with a gnat bite.

Having watched the programme Hospital, I marvel at the energy and commitment of all the staff who are working under the most enormous pressures. Most of them say that they have never seen the health service in the most desperate state it is now. I would say it's no coincidence that this decline has occurred since the Conservatives got into power - and it was predicted that this would happen because many Conservatives, including Jeremy Hunt, have already expressed their very negative views about the NHS.

I saw that djen - how will they find the time?

When I say those I do not mean all pensioners in tax avoidance schemes, although there must be some - I mean all people who are wealthy tax avoiders, be it millionaires, multi-millionaires, billionaires, companies etc.

Yes Ankers that is probably a reason for many of them.

I've said that many times Fitzy54 - I have no idea why pensioners do not pay a reduced rate of NI on a means-tested basis.
That is easy for me to say, of course, as I do not pay tax.

HOWEVER I want those in tax avoidance schemes to be chased, penalised and made to pay their due taxes.

As far as I am concerned, no politicians are to be trusted with our NHS.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/08/two-tier-nhs-gps-allow-patients-pay-jump-the-queue-bournemouth

We need to stop rabbiting on about where the money is spent and concentrate on where it comes from. We need our hospitals to treat young people with their sporting injuries and old people with dementia. Billionaires are not going to pay for it all. Theee are no more cuts to be made so everyone including everyone contributing to this thread will have to put more into the pot if things are to improve to any meaningful extent. Are all of us with more than very basic income prepared to do that or are we all happy to just keep on moaning about the Tories, the immigrants, the billionaires, the drunks in A&E...........

I wonder if the 'drinking culture' is the reason why the age groups 20-24 and 25-29 are the highest users of A&E apart from small children aged 0-4?

And sport injuries?

Jalima, according to someone on the Jeremy Vine show Radio 2 today more in the age groups you mention have accidents involving stairs than the elderly - and it was being blamed on mobile phone addiction!

POGS - you certainly have some ideas worth exploring. I'm not sure I agree entirely but this is what we really need in threads like this- ideas for moving forward.
Jess - maybe we don't need trident but surely need much more spent on defence/security?

I could ask if you agree with seriously ill patients being made to wait longer to be seen by the health care staff because of drunken behaviour where there is no injury for example.

I wonder if the 'drinking culture' is the reason why the age groups 20-24 and 25-29 are the highest users of A&E apart from small children aged 0-4?

Surely that age group can't be more accident-prone or needing other urgent treatment than any other age groups?

X post Joelsnan re convalescent homes, geriatric hospitals etc

Fitzy and Rigby

"Are you really making the point that it shouldn't be free at the point of use or that people should be better informed as to how it is paid for?

A mixture of both actually but this point is a mere tip of the iceberg as to the problems isn't it?. I made a comment which has been latched onto, fair enough, but I consider waste and poor administration bigger problems.

I think the psychology behind the perception/mantra the NHS is 'Free'/'Free at the point of use' does create a feeling it is a god given 'right' to be treated and the knock on effect can cause the situation that no consideration need be given as to whether or not the system is being abused by either the patient and in some way by the NHS.

I could ask if you agree with seriously ill patients being made to wait longer to be seen by the health care staff because of drunken behaviour where there is no injury for example. This not involves the NHS but the Police Force too.

I would definitely adopt a strict triage system at A & E and controversially I think there are circumstances where payment could/should apply, such as Health Tourism (definitely require travel insurance for those outside of the EU),ensuring monies due from EU countries are recouped, drunken/drug abuse patients which are none emergency pay for the service they receive. etc.

Obviously any patient in danger of life irrespective of the cause must receive free treatment.

Again perhaps I am not explaining myself very well but I have tried to respond to your questions.

We don't have much of a navy now JessM.

Perhaps you hadn't noticed.

And yes, I also know that NI payments only contribute a % of the cost of NHS, not the whole cost. However it is a form of health taxation whatever % it is.

If you can't picture what these statistics mean I suggest you go for a wander around a general hospital and just notice the age profile of the people in the beds.

That is because of the lack of convalescent type homes, halfway houses because many of the elderly people occupying the beds could be at home with care or in a convalescent or nursing home.

Stop letting the billionaires get off so lightly would be a start.
Raise (rather than reduce income tax to top earners)
Don't spend money on Trident? We are obviously now broke and can't afford it any more?
Stop behaving like we are a still a world power that can afford to send army and navy hither and thither?

I fail to understand why, because some of the younger generation are not suffering from age related illnesses that some people think that they are not impacting on NHS,

They are certainly higher users of the NHS A&E Departments; older people of 80+ may be the highest users per 1,000 but they are not the highest users by number because the actual number of people in those age groups has dwindled.

Children 0-4 are the highest users of A&E (males more than females).
Age groups 20-29 are the next highest groups.

JessM Having done nurse/midwifery training in Kate 60s early 70s I am well aware of demographics for hospital bed useage and even clinic useage. Yes, as always a high percentage are used by the elderly, however years ago there were specialist geriatric wards to cater for the most aged, mental hospitals were also used for those suffering dementia etc. then there were convalescent homes where they were discharged following treatment and there were council run homes for the elderly, this was the case before the baby boomers impacted positively on tax revenues.
As I have said before yes post war birth rates did exceed current rates, however immigration has mitigated the imbalance. And as has always been the case since the introduction of NI payments, the youth pay for the elders and this reciprocal agreement has occurred since then.

Ankers, I don't know about the social care point but I think people would be prepared to pay more, but for my part I wouldn't want a simple increase in percentage - that suggests taking money from another budget, and I can't see that there is any fat on any spending budget just now. Hence my earlier suggestion that we have an additional tax, but very specifically ring fenced for healthcare. Govts don't like ring fenced taxes for obvious reasons, but this may be one case where it might be acceptable.

Are people interested in paying more as a % of our GDP, like other countries do?

[Rigby, interesting link, but as one of the posters afterwards says, the figures used to compare the UK with Europe do not include NHS spending on social care, whereas other contries the figure might be included?]

POGs - I have no idea what proportion of people don't understand that the NHS is paid for but not at the point of use. I do come across a lot of people who seem to think NI is the principle source of funds but even they realise it is being paid for. Are you really making the point that it shouldn't be free at the point of use or that people should be better informed as to how it is paid for? If the former, then what should people pay for? Who would be exempt? It's a really complex issue and as with most complex issues there is no simple solution.