Thus is the truth that dares not speak its name though. The NHS actually works spectacularly well in many ways. But it is impossible for it ever to "succeed". The more it does, the more it must do. The more treatments it offers, the more people want them. It will always be measured by what it doesn't do, rather than what it does. It is a mind bogglingy complex issue. Funding for the NHS rises all the time, but as it has to do more, it can never be enough. Then there is the political football element, deployed by politicians all of my lifetime, and sometimes from people within the service. As you say, free at point, and unquestioned free at point is utterly unsustainable in the long run. Most or all on here should obviously be entitled to such a service, as it was intentioned, (though the the incredible scope it has now was never foreseen, in fact quite the opposite),but as we all know, the unpleasant truth is that there are now at least 3.5 million people in the country who were encouraged to come without any consideration of the effect on health or other services. Everyone can turn up and expect treatment. It is astonishing, and really a quite fantastic thing to offer . And that is without it's ever increasing task load. The weight of that, coupled with the massive and ever increasing breadth of services offered to everyone is obviously too great to bear. It cannot be sustained. Every solution brings another problem. I don't know the answer but I do know this. The subject is very rarely talked about openly or honestly. Not by anyone in any government or the media or others. Almost every position is emotion based, perhaps inevitably because our own contact with it is often when we are worried or are ill, or one of our is. Maybe it is time to de stress the service by allowing, or even encouraging people to provide some basic personal cover, say for a broken arm, or other such issues to a limit. Then the NHS for weightier things.Not perfect, but nothing is, and maybe it wouldn't work. But our system is unique, initiated from the highest motives, but apart from maybe Cuba?, unique I think. It will take sense, honesty, imagination, and the willingness by everyone involved to talk to the people like adults in proper sentences, rather than click bait sound bites. £400bn has been spent in the last couple of years on furlough, business support and fuel subsidy, with barely any murmur of dissent from anyone, and certainly not from any politicians. There really is no money, short of printing ever more of it, which will completely impoverish everyone, including the next generation. Especially the next generation. I see none of that on the horizon, so the NHS, will stumble along in its genuinely sisyphean task.
There are some excellent points in this post and you're undoubtedly correct that something has to change to have a healthy long term future for the NHS. I do however, think that the NHS is one of the things that makes this country great and we should continue to strive to provide such broad medical care that is free to its citizens. I question the priorities of governments. NHS should be priority number 1 in my view. So if there's no money, we stop supporting failing businesses, subsidising dodgy contracts, stop subsidising our MPs (and other countries), stop subsidising corporation's on tax, stop spending on stupid projects all before we stop spending on the NHS.
After reading through the post there are some very very interesting points of views. Thatcher started the streamlining of the NHS by cutting funding and paying over paid managers to take over from Matrons. These mangers cut corners which the NHS has never recovered from. No government has dealt with the NHS funding or the running since in my opinion. If future governments are not going to deal with underfunding and staff shortage the NHS will crumble. On Monday l was invited too see for myself just how much strain there was in A&E at Kettering General, without going into details l saw a highly dedicated staff doing a fantastic job under extremely difficult circumstances which was beyond their control. When and if we get a change of government they will face the same challenge as all the previous governments since Thatcher. This is not a political party issue, it is a public issue which need to be dealt with by the political establishment.
That's the problem. They don't propose any real changes, they were fully on board with the gargantuan furlough and fuel spending, even wanting more of the former, and also use the NHS as a football. Only genuine and serious reform will sort it out and it will take years were we to start now. If we don't learn from other countries, we can't expect it to get better.
Yes. But health is already, by far and away the biggest spend by the UK government. Six times defence spending, we'll over twice education. Nothing comes even remotely close. It's probably just too big. Somehow, honesty has to come into it and decisions have to be made. But the decisions might not bear fruit for ten years, maybe longer. Which politician will make a decision like that?
Non of the political parties have the balls to openly chop up the NHS into small privatised units as they would never get re-elected again. Instead they are taking a very slow stealth method hoping no one notices. I've just retired from a company closely attached to the NHS and I can tell you it is totally broken, with demoralised staff who don't know which way to turn next, the care in the community is another broken unit as that is the bottle neck stopping the flow through from hospital to care elsewhere, it used to be called community hospitals when I was a kid, but now privatised its also gone bellyup. There isn't enough printed money to solve this problem so my hope for ourselves and everyone on here is to avoid becoming seriously ill any time soon. Sad state of affairs indeed. Rant over.
I still believe anything that is not life threatening or really serious should be cancelled until these operations are cleared.
Public services and staff have been smashed into the ground getting fleeced for the last 12 years. No the wonder people have had enough. Power to the people.
That's my point, they don't offer any short-term fix as it's going to take more than one term to work out the damage done by the tories, before implementing any new changes / policies.
In the interests of fairness and balance. It's not just the last 12 years that have shagged the NHS. Every government since the 80's has failed miserably to support and strengthen it. Red or blue, they have all been useless
Yes, you can look at them all, and be right to do so. But, again, they all DO, support it. The cash has always grown, but it is literally impossible to keep up with the demand. It is just too vast IMO. It is the third largest employer in the world, with massive costs on top. Everyone wants everything. From an ingrown toe nail, to a tattoo removed ( this does happen), to cosmetic surgery to gender realignment, to physiotherapy, to psychiatric help, to a hundred other things beyond naming. It is impossibly complex. Easy blame and easy slogans will not solve it. No other country has a system like ours. And for all its good, no country has designed one like it when given the task in the last seventy years. We might have to learn from the reason why.
Fair play mate. No doubt the last 12 years and austerity have been part of the problem. It goes back further than though like you say. Labour had power for years and I am not sure did much to help, and they did push hard those PFI deals. I actually thought Blair was on his way to privatising it at one point. The tories before them failed the system as well. I actually wonder after so many years can it ever be fixed without a major overhaul. Others have said it better than me, but I doubt the way our politics works no PM is going to commit to such an overhaul. I was in a hospital today, with a relative who has had a fall. The sheer numbers of people were staggering. The doctor we saw was tremendous, and on time etc. One thing I hope isnt the norm though is the experience of collecting medicine. Took 2 hours to collect from the onsite pharmacy and it was a mind biggling process. Carry a piece of paper from the doc to the pharmacy, 50 mins to hand the paper to someome, that someone checked stock levels before deciding to dispense, said they had some but not all and would I accept that - showed me what they had in the basket. I said yes. An hour later they are handed over to me! I have to say it was laughably inefficient. Paper and manual stock checks! I felt sorry for the lass who dealt with me, kept apologising even though I said it was not a problem. Pretty common pain killers as well!! There were sick people queueing hours - like I say hope it was just a bad day I saw.
Mates a driver for Go Northeast. They wanted a 13 percent rise, and Settled at 10. 10 percent pay rise. He isn't a kick up the arse from my Manager salary. Bus drivers on 13 quid an hour. How can transport be sorted so quickly yet all the other sectors can't?
Thought I'd share a snippet of the problems the NHS face. My dear sister turned up for her shift this morning to find 150 patients needing beds, that have been arriving at the various hospitals in her trust since 8pm last night. She doesn't have 5 beds spare, let alone the nurses to care properly for 150 people. She will be there till what ever time tonight trying to magic up beds, staff and help with care and then she gets to to do it all again starting at 6am tomorrow morning
One word doesn’t make it better for her , but please tell her that there is a total stranger here that wants her to know - Thankyou , thankyou , thankyou. ( ok , three words) !
Thank you mate, I'm fair proud of her, for what she does every day in the face of constant battles. Like most of the NHS, she just wants the best for the patients
I agree to some extent. I think the ambulance service should be allowed to, in not so many words, tell people to “go **** themselves” when they ring and request an ambulance for something trivial. One of the major issues with the service
I don’t mean forever, just until we get on top of life threatening operations and get back on track otherwise nothing will ever change.
