Cuts and privatisation killing the NHS?
Well, the government certainly, yes.
I’m not sure about cuts. From what I’ve heard, more and more money is being ploughed into the NHS but, unfortunately, the NHS is now more a bureaucracy than a health service! The money paid to the NHS seems to be spent more on senior management and pen pushers and less on clinicians.
The NHS, if it is to survive, needs a top-down reorganisation and cuts of the unnecessary staff.
Privatisation? No, I cannot accept that privatisation is killing the NHS. The NHS is killing itself.
I have gone private recently simply because I am not prepared to wait for a year or more for my health problems to be investigated and resolved.
Of course I’m sorry for those people who cannot afford the advantages of private medicine, but that is hardly my fault and I’d be stupid to refuse private treatment simply because others cannot afford it. One’s health comes first.
I think we shall have to face facts. We are, as many have predicted, becoming increasingly like America: a combination of private medicine and NHS.
I’m sure we all know that our population numbers are increasing rapidly, yet our national finances are not keeping up. When bureaucracy has taken over the NHS even further and nothing is done to correct that I can see little future for it.
A very personal view of things being a frequent visitor to Resus and then the wards.
Sometimes taking more than 18 hours to get from Resus to a Ward and waiting for an ambulance so long that I have been given morphine to take at home whilst waiting for an ambulance.
We have plenty of ambulances locally, but they are soon used up by having to wait outside A&E to discharge their patients.
The patients then go into Pitstop, which, while they have been triaged, often means a wait on a trolley for hours whilst their condition often deteriorates.
This is in a corridor, no call bell and often they wet or soil themselves whilst waiting…
Then you are magically whisked away to either AMU or Short Stay.
If you are very lucky, you get into either Resus Red or Green., which normally means you will be going to a Ward.
That is when the long wait starts, they have to find a bed for you, and discharge procedures are not good in many hospitals.
In the very best if you are fit for discharge, you are out and on your way home in 40 minutes, in others it takes 72 hours for the same, with no back up or home care in place.
This is the reality of the NHS at the present time.
My experience, after my pacemaker fitting, began with, “You’ll be able to go home tomorrow”.
Tomorrow came, of course, and I was all prepared to leave. I had put on my clothes and, awaiting permission, was lying on my bed…
and lying, and lying, and lying.
One high point, a kind nurse came in and asked if I’d like a cup of tea.
It wasn’t until late afternoon when, presumably, the required paperwork had been completed, that I was given my freedom and was allowed to call Marge to bring my chariot.
So go private. Sorted. Keep in mind that all of us who do chose to go down the private path are subsidising you by not having to make use of NHS services - and we get no tax relief on our payments for doing so.
Sound more like waiting to be released from prison than a hospital. Why can’t you just leave?
I haven’t been to hospital for years but from what I can recall the only thing a hospital cares about once they say you can go is whether you have transport home and whether there is someone to look after you at home (depending on your medical circumstances) but they won’t stop you leaving.
Not this Government. I was once stopped in the street by an NHS worker and was told this so, I went home and started doing some digging on the NHS’s own websites. It turned out that many more services were privatised under Blair’s and Brown’s governments than by the Tory governments that have followed.
As for delays in ambulance services, it has been widely reported on our local TV news broadcasts that the problem actually starts at the end of the story not the beginning. There are fewer people leaving hospital because of a lack of space in old folks’ homes, etc or their own homes are unsuitable for them to return to so they are blocking much needed hospital beds while suitable alternatives are arranged for them. Because these beds are blocked, patients can’t be moved out of A&E into the hospital proper causing A&E to be chock full. And, because A&E is chock full, any ambulances arriving at the door can’t off load their patients.
But don’t worry. Royalty, politicians, the rich and some of us who have had the foresight and good luck to have saved up a bob or two can go privately.
As I’ve said before, where America goes, Britain follows.
I am sorry but what your saying about Labour, although true and is pointedly used in the argument to support the current Government, is not the whole truth. The Labour Government farmed out many small ‘inconvenient’ or ‘specialist’ parts of the NHS. However, the present Government sold off greater parts of the service itself. A bit like comparing a car boot sale of stuff from the shed to a wholesale sell-off of all the furniture, car, and Granny. Take for example the doctor’s surgeries being bought up now by American companies. Or the movement of doctors to become locums losing hundreds of doctors and forcing hospitals to use these locums at extortionate prices. The agencies selling the locums are minting it.
The ambulance services have suffered, due to an increase in use, but are completely hindered by the loss of ambulances and trained staff due to the cuts. (The fire service is suffering the same) Let’s not forget also the ‘reorganisation’ of services.
The lack of space in old folks’ homes is a major problem, but these are all privately owned now and local councils do not build them anymore. Not only does the taxpayer pay for their care but the profits of the private companies. By the way, the promise by this government to stop these companies from emptying the coffers of said old people before the Government will look after them has, like so many other promises, failed to materialise.
The loss of immigrant labour after BREXIT and the loss of bursaries for trainee nurses has meant that our NHS hospitals are understaffed and the strain on those left is forcing many of them out.
All of the above and more are the responsibility of this Government. Let us not forget Michael Portillo who said in an interview that the Conservative Party hierarchy detests the whole idea of the NHS. It seems he was right, and the plan is to get rid of it altogether and reduce us to the American idea of ambulances searching the injured for insurance before treating or helping them.
I couldn’t find any source material for this so, a link to it if you please. The closest I could find was this from 2004:
Comment: Michael Portillo: Tiptoeing around the myth of a free health service
Sunday June 27 2004, 1.00am, The Sunday Times
Aneurin Bevan, the minister of health, was incensed, however. He persuaded his leader that since the Tories had voted against the second and third readings of the parliamentary bill, Labour should make health a partisan issue.
Ever since that day in 1948, the Tories have been on the back foot. Although the party had more years in office than Labour and has therefore nursed the NHS during more than half its existence, the public distrusts its intentions. Even though Margaret Thatcher during her whirlwind of public sector reform left the basis of health funding well alone, the Tories are still suspected of wanting to privatise the service. According to an opinion poll this month 34% trust Labour with the NHS, and only 20% the Conservatives.
tories = privatization : labor = nationalization no need to go searching for long forgotten quotes. if you are working class you can never trust the tories if you are upperclass you must always trust the tories till you get to boris!
That’s an interesting comment. Even the Coalition Governments (basically the Tories) here recognised that Medicare is popular and have given up trying to change it for the worse. Medicare and our mix of public/private health care is here to stay, perhaps the only area ripe for reform is dentistry but there seems to be no real push to incorporate that into Medicare.
