Get the Tories Out!

[Pat ex]

The crisis in the NHS is also probably contributing to the UK’s very tight labour market.

And in the NHS itself.

NHS Absence rates in January 2022

The overall sickness absence rate for England was 6.7%. This is higher than December 2021 (6.2%) and higher than January 2021 (5.7%).

Reason for sickness absence
Anxiety/stress/depression/other psychiatric illnesses is consistently the most reported reason for sickness absence, accounting for nearly 539,300 full time equivalent days lost and 19.9% of all sickness absence in January 2022. This has decreased since December 2021 (23.7%).

NHS Sickness Absence Rates, January 2022, Provisional Statistics - NHS Digital

We’re the national information and technology partner to the health and social care system using digital technology to transform the NHS and social care

digital.nhs.uk

 

[JohnD]

@seanmars

As you know, Conservatism dislikes public services, public funding, and public ownership, so the Adoption system is one of the services that has been underfunded for more than ten years. There are more children in care, for longer, and more willing parents awaiting a decision.

This is not just callous penny-pinching, it is stupidity.

No one wants this. We know that, essentially, every child that the state successfully moves from the care of the local authority to that of a family has better life chances and, cynically, costs the state a lot less in the long run.

 

[JohnD]

@seanmars

As you know, Conservatism dislikes public services, public funding, and public ownership.

Are you beginning to see a pattern?

 

[Notch7]

It's massively inefficient

Is it?
compared to what?

paying numerous unproductive staff massive wages

Which staff?
can you be specific

but this one is terminally

maybe it’s because of Tory underfunding

do Tories want the NHS to fail so they can push privatisation?

 

[Notch7]

and which should be paid for by the recipient of the treatment

So only the rich can afford healthcare.


like America where the most common cause of bankruptcy is healthcare bills.

 

[Notch7]

But I don't, as I accept that public spending is not a bottomless pit of limitless cash

Maybe the current govt shouldn’t siphon off NHS money into private healthcare where MOs can get their grubby hands on the dish.

This infests the Conservative govt mostly but private healthcare lobbyists are after Labour MPs now.

There is a reason why France, Italy, Germany have a better health service, the public pay more for it. They are of course mixed systems.

 

[JohnD]

Conservative unthinking dislike of public services has made Britain a worse country.

https://www.ft.com/content/e9fef496-7bd2-4bee-ac9b-e17359944eae

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Conservative unthinking dislike of public services has made Britain a worse country.

https://www.ft.com/content/e9fef496-7bd2-4bee-ac9b-e17359944eae

You must have been to "how to be a politician" school with all your needless repetition. Just the sort of thing that has me reaching for the mute button on the telly when they start making intelligence-insulting speeches like your posts.

Labour are continually promising the impossible, the Tories just cut budgets without wanting to make any unpopular decisions so leave public services stretched paper-thin. What's actually needed are tough choices about what the state does and doesn't pay for. And the only way out of the current mess is for the state to spend less money on a lot less, including the vast scope of NHS treatments that are offered. Do fewer things well instead of trying to do everything badly.

If the NHS was returned to treating only serious illnesses and injuries as originally intended then its budget could be controlled and it would actually achieve what it set out to do using less money.

Does anyone seriously think the NHS can just continue infinitely expanding and treating absolutely everything?

 

[JohnD]

as originally intended

Please show me the official declaration of intent you think you have heard of.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Are you suggesting that its founding principle was that it provided free gym memberships?

Anyway, that was all decades ago, the world's a very different place now. Should be just accept that every time a new need arises, the NHS budget just increases, potentially infinitely? No government could ever afford to cover the cost of everything it currently does to an acceptable standard now, never mind in the future as it inevitably continues expanding its services.

It's already in the top 10 largest employers IN THE WORLD, not just the UK, shocking for a tiny island. It's basically a giant tumour that's steadily consuming all of the UK's money.

In what universe is this sort of spending sustainable?...

The graph above IS inflation adjusted, the spending increase really is that bad, in real terms.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

If the NHS was returned to treating only serious illnesses and injuries as originally intended then its budget could be controlled and it would actually achieve what it set out to do using less money.

Define serious. Is testing children for eyesight defects and providing spectacles serious? Is mental health serious? Is pre-natal care serious or necessary? Or is it just accidents which qualify? And what about life threatening sports injuries? And what about life threatening work injuries?

You are just downright wrong about the reasons the NHS was set up. It was set-up in a period after a punishing world war when the future health and wellbeing of the nation required a move away from the private healthcare model which had existed up until that time and which served the ordinary working person, the young, the poor and the elderly so badly. It came out of the realisation that a healthy nation is a productive nation. The
NHS constitution states it this way, "The NHS belongs to the people. It is there to improve our health and wellbeing, supporting us to keep mentally and physically well, to get better when we are ill and, when we cannot fully recover, to stay as well as we can to the end of our lives.". So NOTHING about only treating serious injury or illness

In combination with improvements in the environment (various environmental legislation), working conditions (health and safety legislation) and diet the NHS has been hugely important in making it possible for many of us to live longer and better

My parents were both in nursing at the time the NHS came into being. Both said the same thing: that far fewer people were condemned to a miserable and shortened remaining lifetime because of the NHS.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Here's a more up to date graph including the additional burden from Covid, the annual budget is currently £190 BILLION!!! If the drop in budget next year is actually real then that must be because Covid's been cured and has gone away - obviously it hasn't, plus there's a massive backlog of other work due to the covid disruption so I doubt the projected drop is likely.

The NHS budget and how it has changed

What is the NHS budget and how is it funded? Find out in our nutshell.

www.kingsfund.org.uk

We're currently spending around £2,700 per year, per man, woman and child on the NHS, or just under £7,000 per household. We urgently need to wake up and ask some fundamental questions about what the NHS is for and what we do about it. If the labour party's plan is just to spend more then that's definitely not going to solve the issue and may be enough to cause another Truss moment on the world markets, as we'd need to increase borrowing even further to do this.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

By the way, both of those graphs prove that the evil Tories have not actually been cutting the NHS budget. Perhaps they've been restricting the rises a little, and did slow the relentless pace of increase after the Blair years but clearly the only way is up, other than a tiny fall around 2008-2012, which was soon wiped out by the increases that followed.

Previous Tory governments have also not cut the NHS budget, either nominally or in real terms.

It's just a monster that consumes all money thrown at it then demands more.

 

[JohnD]

Are you suggesting that its founding principle was that it provided free gym memberships?

No, I am saying (not suggesting) that you made an untrue claim that you cannot substantiate and you are now reversing away from it

 

[JohnD]

There's a massive backlog of other work

As you are a man of massive and obvious ignorance, perhaps you are unaware that UK has an ageing population, and a great many people around and over retirement age

Perhaps you are also unaware that older people need more care, more often, for longer

Our aging population needs more healthcare, and our government wants the NHS to be unable to provide it.

It does not have any slack in reserve to cope with the extra and inevitable demands of a hard winter or a virulent flu, never mind a serious and widespread epidemic.