Current Affairs Labour and Anti Semitism.......

[Bruce Wayne]

They could increase NHS efficiency by ensuring that IT staff fix their API issues rather than responding to political distractions on football forums

 

[Number_25]

They could increase NHS efficiency by ensuring that IT staff fix their API issues rather than responding to political distractions on football forums

This is for our stuff, none of their stuff is touched.

Point well made though, off I pop.

 

[PhilM]

Can we get real about this here? Labour's proposal is hardly some sort of ideological attack everyone that works.

Those that earn over £80,000 will see a nominal 5% increase on the tax that they pay. Those who earn in excess of £123,000 a year will see a nominal 10% increase on the tax that they pay.

That money will be taken, and redistributed in a manner that'll ensure a decent standard of living for millions of poverty struck children.

Is that really class warfare?

You're amalgamating two and or more different arguments and as such losing the original point which was the proposed taxation of private medical insurance.

It is not reforming the NHS or consumer markets (like I mentioned, I disagree with such meddling) or the increase on income tax rates for the wealthy.

The point was simply that Labour have proposed to tax private medical insurance, which is an entirely separate aspect, but often undertaken by the wealthy.

As @Bruce Wayne and @Foot Long Hot Dog mentioned, the gains will be minimal and as such it could arguably be perceived as an attack on a certain class.

I'm a huge advocate of protecting the NHS but I have also been fortunate enough (through a work-based scheme) to previously have had private medical care.

I had an issue, I went to Bupa, I saw a private consultant and had minor surgery not long after in a private hospital - all while paying my income taxes and NI.

May I add, I'm far from being in the brackets of the £80k or £123k per annum earners and instead it was a choice I made as part of my employment contract.

On the other hand, the use of private medical companies to facilitate NHS services is something that I do worry about and something I suspect you are alluding to.

 

[Foot Long Hot Dog]

Rather than looking at further taxing the benefit in kind of healthcare insurance, they’d be far better served charging the private heatlcare providers for their consultants referrals to the NHS, for procedures, treatments and surgeries that the private providers don’t provide. As it stands, all that happens is that as a private patient referred back for a specific treatment you appear to queue jump, but there’s no cost to the private sector as it’s all arranged by the consultants who invariably work for both sectors simultaneously. That’d be far more lucrative.

 

[Blue 1]

Wow, Sajid Javid is one dirty [Poor language removed]. Anyone seen his tweet wishing Jews a Happy New Year?

One might even call it antisemitic.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

 

[Foot Long Hot Dog]

That’s a really cheap shot, poor form.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It's like you've got to be a complete prat to be Home Secretary in this government.

 

[Foot Long Hot Dog]

It's like you've got to be a complete prat to be Home Secretary in this government.

Indeed mate. Javid is an odd fish, given his background you’d have thought that he must have had some strong political convictions to give that up to become an MP......but seemingly not, he’s just another career politician with zero integrity, in it for the ego trip.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Indeed mate. Javid is an odd fish, given his background you’d have thought that he must have had some strong political convictions to give that up to become an MP......but seemingly not, he’s just another career politician with zero integrity, in it for the ego trip.

I'm kinda inclined to think they actually believe it. As we've seen, there are some folk with some peculiar views that they dogmatically stick by.

 

[magicjuan]

I’m going to take the ideology out of this for a moment.

For the past couple of decades, both Conservative and Labour governments have worked toward reforming the NHS on an agenda of consumer choice, and greater market competition. Margaret Thatcher started this process in 1989 with her “internal market” reforms, which were then built upon under New Labour – metastasising to form the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. The overarching belief is that opening the NHS up to external providers will allow the state to benefit from a stimulation in market competition to lower running costs, increase responsiveness to individual patient care.

However we have seen a number of NHS trusts declare that they’re unable to provide services to the standards set by central government, citing an upsurge in demand and a lack of resources.

Something obviously isn’t right.

Anyone that has even a remote interest in the health economics should know who Kenneth Arrow is. He has cited that the provision of healthcare suffers from an inherent issue of market failure. To break this down a bit, the healthcare market is implicitly uncertain, whether it be the prediction of service demand or the efficacy of treatment – both of which have been cited as being major precursors of market failure. I’m trying to find it, but there was a paper published earlier this year with detailed how price competition has led to a worsening of patient care – illustrating how serious this market failure problem is.

Moreover, the increased involvement of the private sector has amalgamated to create a bureaucracy so big that billions of pounds are being drawn from the frontline patient care. This is why I always tend to cringe whenever I see a politician state that they’ll save the NHS by conducting “efficiency savings”, which usually involves furthering private sector involvement in the service – increasing the levels of bureaucracy required to keep the private-public relationship going.

Another thing to understand is that private firms are ultimately interested in maximising profits. Strategies that increase profitability usually revolve around reducing staff levels, thus the quality of care. Furthermore, even policies of reduced private sector involvement in the NHS (akin to what end Ed Miliband’s Labour Party was offering in 2015) did nothing to stop any cherry picking of profitable services, and would have left the state to manage only unprofitable services (ergo, the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS trust).

I’m rambling on a bit here, but the main premise of my argument is that market failure is inherent in the provision of healthcare, and there is a large enough corpus of real-world evidence that points toward private involvement in the NHS resulting in a lesser quality of health service.

The market failure is very rarely mentioned because it would explain flaws in the market system itself.
A relative of mine was head of a PCT, recently retired, he explained the real situation in the NHS, how from the top to the bottom there is resistance to the implementation of tory changes but it is ignored and discounted for ideological reasons.

 

[bol-uk]

But it’s much easier to have a go at Israel than make sensible proposals for housing, health and Brexit.......

LOL, is he wrong to criticise Israel?

 

[roydo]

LOL, is he wrong to criticise Israel?

Of course not. Deselecting a prominent Pro Israel Labour MP, whilst allegedly allowing a (banned) Iranian TV station employee to both vote in, and broadcast from the deselection process, seems a bit concerning mind.

But I just read that in the Telegraph after finishing the crossword, so expect its all lies.

 

[Foot Long Hot Dog]

LOL, is he wrong to criticise Israel?

Most of the quotes being chucked out on a seemingly weekly basis by the right wing rags and the JC appear to have been dug up over a 15 year period, I’m not sure any of them have even been from the period he’s been leader. But of course he should have been planning for Brexit back in 2013 instead of calling out the Israeli Govt over their illegal occupation and treatment of the Palestinians........deflect, deflect, deflect.

 

[peteblue]