The future of the NHS

[Bruce Wayne]

Agree. How can you expect something to work when you fund it less and raise it's workload?

Classic privatisation tactic, and I for one, oppose it.

If I remember correctly, we actually spend less than most nations on healthcare, so in answer to the OP, basically, fund it properly.

Every NHS trust accepts donations if people feel so strongly about giving them more money - it is easily doable without requiring governments to change taxation

Alas I fear things need a fundamental rethink and that it isn't a case of the current approach would be perfect if only it had more money.

 

[chrismpw]

It seems to me that there is far too much admin and beaurocracy (sp?) that is clogging up the whole system.

They used to have long term geriatric wards in hospitals. Great idea - better than unscrupulous care homes run entirely for profit.

Amen to that.
But administration creates jobs to win votes and care homes, as well as providing underpaid jobs allow the selected few psychotic individuals with money to invest to make an utter killing. Governments love both.

 

[Eggs]

...the key word is 'Service'. Like all services (Civil Service, Fire Service, Police Service etc) you get what you pay for. We have a Government who's ideology is a small public sector. Reduced investment results in reduced service. Simple really.

 

[Tree13]

Wouldn't be so sure mate. 49% of people polled in 2014 said they would be in favour of paying a specific tax to support the NHS, with only a third saying they definitely would not. With a barrage of political pressure I think such a proposal would pass easily if it were correctly structured.

I remember reading about that. What I can't fathom is why, if people are theoretically willing to pay more for better healthcare, don't the bulk of these 49% just take out private health insurance?

My objection to paying more in tax, even if it is to a ring-fenced NHS kitty, is that the people who then spend that money are very poor at their jobs and the money is spent badly. Better funding for the NHS would obviously be a good thing, but does anyone really think that the finance bods in the NHS spend their funds intelligently as it is?

 

[Tree13]

Take back crutches!!!

I have 4 sets in my garage because the NHS don't want them back...

I experienced the same thing after I had ankle surgery. Apparently it costs them more to sterilise them upon return than it does to just buy new ones.

 

[hibbo'sclass]

Not at all. I'm all for simplification. My point is that huge global companies are getting away with paying miniscule amounts of tax compared to what they should pay at the correct rate- not asking them to pay more, just what they should. Why let them do it? It might not be illegal but it is certainly immoral. You or I couldn't do it and Joe the plumber or Fred the decorator who take a few cash in hand jobs will be the ones who get caught and punished severely.

And while I'm on a rant, look at the resource dedicated to catching benefit fraudsters (which is also illegal and I'm not advocating it) It is huge compared to the resource dedicated to tax avoidance, which costs the economy far more. I'm waiting for the equivalent programme to Benefit Street too- Tax Avoidance Towers maybe?

Morally, the multi-nationals should certainly pay more - but legally they have played by the rules.
Whilst some measures have been taken to circumvent the avoidance including transfer pricing, the tax take in % terms will always be less than for micro-entities due to the resource available for tax planning - eg Google/Starbucks/whoever will have the money to spend on tax planning that others could only dream of.
Joe and Fred are committing a criminal offence as it isn't avoidance, but evasion, and if they get caught it's because they've overdone the cash jobs (probably while claiming the materials through the legitimate books).
To be fair, the majority of people in business be it Joe, Fred or Apple are looking to mitigate tax which could be raised and spent on the NHS.
As I said in my earlier post, the majority of incorporations in the time I've been in the UK are tax driven - by tax driven although it's actually NI that is the biggest saving for sole traders. So is a person who trades as a limited company is a tax avoider be the target of the same vitriol as Google?
Long- winded but just pointing out that tax take is abused by most businesses.
Wpuld put a smiley in but my phone sucks!

 

[DownOnTheUpside]

I tend to work at the other end of the spectrum, ie not with huge pharma companies with established links with a trust, but with startups and research labs that have no links but incredibly neat products, and it's a Kafka like process trying to get anything done at all. Talking to a trust themselves is generally impossible. NHS England launched their test bed scheme, but that has largely been a failure. The AHSNs are awful at their job, so seldom are innovative solutions sought out, and even more seldom are any of those that are found to work in one trust then spread to all of the others.

Hence you get things like the recent announcement of a new AI based triage system that billions is being spent on, when a company just down the road from me has developed (and is using this with customers) a service that already does this (and does so for a fraction of the cost of the proposed NHS system). I spoke to them at the time of the announcement and no one from NHS England had even been in touch.

As I said previously, there is sooo much incredible stuff going on in the healthcare industry at the moment, and the pace and spread of innovation is the like of which I've never seen before. But I'm not confident whatsoever that the NHS is equipped to ingest all of these things.

ugh have you heard anything about the snowmed fiasco?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

ugh have you heard anything about the snowmed fiasco?

Not directly, but I may dip my toe into patient information in the coming months. Utterly dreading it

 

[DownOnTheUpside]

Not directly, but I may dip my toe into patient information in the coming months. Utterly dreading it lol

Honestly about half of these vanity project car crashes wouldn't happen if people wouldnt happen if they just talked to people who work in the actual departments first

 

[peteblue]

Educate people that the NHS is not an excuse to turn up at a GP with a runny nose or an achey leg.

Educate people that A&E is not a final destination after a night out.

And educate the NHS to actually spend money properly.

That would sort out many of it's problems.......

 

[COYBL25]

Agree. How can you expect something to work when you fund it less and raise it's workload?

Classic privatisation tactic, and I for one, oppose it.

If I remember correctly, we actually spend less than most nations on healthcare, so in answer to the OP, basically, fund it properly.

Spot on.

Just like every public service, the NHS is being slowly run down to allow privatisation to take place, maybe not all of it, but certainly some of it.

It's already happening with the use of P.F.I.'s to fund and build new hospitals. On the Wirral, Virgin having been running an alleged pilot District Nursing Service for a couple of years.

What can be privatised will be privatised in our lifetime, it's inevitable.