Isn't the NHS actually one of the most efficient health services in the world? Sure, there are areas where it could be improved, but the idea that it's some horrifically inefficient money pit is a load of cobblers.
America was all.... That chart doesn't mean the UK has an effective healthcare system though. It just means everyone else is worse.
It is the most efficient of the ones listed as Nexxos' graphic illustrates... But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is efficient, It just means it's more efficient than the other 10 on that list. The NHS could still be a gigantic bloated cluster**** of an institution, but if it is, the other 10 countries' equivalents are evidently far, far, worse...
And I'd like to fix people's attention especially on the US, which embraces the Conservative ideal of private health care. Supposed to be better, no? More efficient, cheaper, more user friendly? Yet it is outperformed by the state health care system of Cuba: a Communist third world island.
Austerity is now a dirty word. Over-used by anti-austerity, anti-conservatives, anti-authority, anti-[insert your own here]. It basically boils down to: we cannot afford anything right now because we over-mortgaged our country under Labour. This was great for the needy/wanty/and more-so, the deserving. It made people feel better. It allowed people to look at Labour as the peoples party. Even though it was Blairs personal agenda party to buy his American friends. Investing in infrastructure costs more money. Increases the debt. Increases the deficit. Does NOT return a magical amount of money more than was originally invested. It just means things (people, goods, data) are delivered slightly faster than previously. Investing in public services costs more money. Increases the debt. Increases the deficit. Does NOT return a magical amount of money more than was originally invested. It means people 'feel' better. Ironically 'feelings' cost nothing. BUT we do need to increase spending on all things related to the government. So how the heck do we do that?! The private sector pays for everything. Without the private sector we are apes, scratching our armpits, beating our chests, and pissing in our own mouths. I read the other day about a massive pharma company making £2-3billion in PROFITS and dodging its tax responsibilities. We know about Starbucks dodging their taxes - and the other week they happily announced leading the corporate pack and paying the living wage - its no wonder they are happy about it - the massive very expensive costs come straight out of their dodged tax responsibilities. Amazon has been bitch-slapping our high street stores ever since it arrived on our shores and dodged its taxes. This is not a Conservative led problem, this is a successive party led problem where our elected leaders have failed us. The poor pay their taxes - the rich list, the entertainers, the dirty corporations - greed lights their paths. While the poor thinks about working extra hours to have a nicer holiday - the richest spend their days thinking up new ways to dodge their tax responsibilities. These companies and people dodging their tax responsibilities will never leave the UK if they are made to pay their tax responsibilities, and if they do pack up and leave, good riddance, there will always be more companies and people to fill the gaps they leave. Don't get me wrong. Without great business leaders, without well run corporations, without great elected leaders, we would be pissing in our mouths. We NEED the private sector. It pays for everything. But without tackling the tax dodging, people will never accept austerity as THE solution. Even though it currently is the main issue. Balancing our government income to our government expenditure. We need to attract foreign investment in terms of money coming into the country, and jobs for people. We need everyone (including all businesses) to pay their tax responsibilities. Arguably the pharma that made £2-3billion in profits might leave if made to pay their tax responsibilities. They might set up labs in china or india. Amazon sells other peoples goods. They will always need to sell in the UK. They won't leave if made to pay their tax. Starbucks won't leave either. Valve sell from Luxemburg too. But we will always need our PC games, and if they stopped selling due to tax responsibilities then another delivery service willing to pay tax would set up. The government announced that soon, if anyone from the UK bought anything regardless of where a tax dodge might exist (like offshhore of the UK), then the purchase will be liable to the correct tax liability. If this happens then its the start of something good. So, how do we attract money creating businesses - manufacturing of goods - creation of worth - to the UK? Low wages means cheap labour. Low corporation tax means more profits. Attractive to businesses willing to invest in the UK. But we want higher wages, AND more tax from businesses!! China and India look much more attractive. A no win situation?? We are still paying out much more than we can afford. Deficit. Due to paying out much more than we can afford, we owe lots of cash. Debt. But, the situation would be a lot worse if Labour was still in government. They sold our assets, they borrowed too much, all on the promise that our job in the world was safe. Ring any bells? Us plebs with our credit cards, loans, and self-certificating mortgages. We bankrupt ourselves.
You realise that's a myth, right? The factors that led to the credit crunch of 2007 had nothing to do with Labour. In fact, until then national debt had reduced under Labour (from about 45% GDP to about 35% GDP) and so had government borrowing. From your post I suspect that you do not have a firm grasp on how the economy works. For instance: how does government investment in infrastructure generate money? Why, who builds all that infrastructure? Private businesses do, of course! So there's profit and jobs right there. Profit is re-invested; wages are spent, all boosting the economy. How does government investment in public services generate money? Well, how do private businesses benefit from providing to those services, and using them? Why do you think private companies are (or rather, were) often so eager to tender for government contracts? How can we encourage private businesses to invest in the UK and still have higher wages? Why, by offering highly-valued, specialist skilled labour that is not available anywhere else. That means investing in the training of a skilled workforce. Are we doing that?
Quite right Nexxo, Labour did not cause the worlds financial collapse. Labour were in power to May 2010.
Now we've established that, let's check out the graph below: When did debt sharply increase? In 2008-2009, right after the global credit crunch --which the IMF states was basically caused by trillions of dollars of bad debt created in the US. Banks needed bailing out, insurance companies collapsed, etc. I think most people do not realise just how bad things were, and how Gordon Brown (yes, the uncharismatic Labour PM with the dodgy eye) pulled a rabbit out of the hat in limiting the damage as much as he did. People really don't. Things were bad, Forum_User, really bad. We were on the brink of a global financial collapse, no kidding. I'm talking full-on Mad Max apocalypse style.
I think companies will move if the tax breaks were withdrawn. They moved from their home country didn't they? Whats to stop them doing it again. All that really needs to happen is the cost of moving to be less than the drop in profits from paying tax. I'm still expecting something to happen to manufacturing in Ireland, which is booming at the moment as well as large tech businesses (Amazon, Google, etc). External political pressure or some how a more socialist leaning party gets into to power, those tax breaks change and those businesses will leave. There is probably something in the skilled workforce required for manufacturing/IT as a factor in American med device pharmaceuticals and tech companies staying. But by the same note a production line can be put in a box, put on a plane and shipped to another country fairly easily. Its even easier to write it off and buy a new one and put it in a new location. If a corporation just has a lot of middle management business administrators type operations in a country I would think that could be moved very easily. What gets me is whatever tax is not being payed by large corporations is shouldered by its employees and the wider public. Meanwhile they sit on mountains of cash they can't bring back to the states for tax reasons and are probably not going to spend either.
As Nexxo pointed out it's a myth that Labor over-mortgaged the country, we can't afford anything right now because we're paying off the debt that came about from bailing out a deregulated banking system. If that's the case then why is the current government investing so much in infrastructure? Doesn't delivering people, goods, data faster mean less time/money is spent being unproductive, less time/money spent on transportation cost, etc, etc. Doesn't investing in public services create a better place for businesses to do business, we wouldn't be very business friendly if we couldn't provide a fit, healthy, well educated workforce, didn't collect their rubbish, maintain law and order, roads, rail, and all those other public services we provide that business use everyday. The private sector doesn't pay for anything, people pay for everything, whether they work in the public or private sectors, neither of which would exist without people generating income, without people being productive. So attract foreign investment but don't invest our own money in our own country? And it's only been going up despite claims to the contrary. Yea because the Conservatives have never sold of any of the family silver have they. A deregulated banking system bankrupted us, do you really think credit cards, loans, and self-certificating mortgages have nothing to do with the banking system or that those alone would be able to rack up a £1.56 trillion debt?
Corky, mortgages dished out to people who were high risk were the start of the collapse, then everyone pulling finance carried the collapse to the bottom. Sub-prime mortgages. And Nexxo, yes I do know.
I'm sorry, but sometimes thats exactly whats needed. It works in plenty of other disciplines from a purely managerial point of view. Someone who knows how to run a business and comes in without a preconceived notion of what was going on previously is the best way because it was the way. Fresh set of eyes and all that. A friends mother used to run a significantly large part of the NHS, and do you know who they wanted to bring in to shake it up? Sir Terry Leahy. What experience does he have in the NHS? Zip. But he can run a business.. Well, until the auditors started fiddling the numbers last year.
That's half true. It wasn't the mortgages themselves that caused the crash, it was that they were high risk and were repackaged with bits of 'good' debt and sold on as products to the market. So when people defaulted the good parts of the product fell too. People defaulting wasn't an occurrence that began in 2007/8, it was just it started affecting other financial packages.
As Mankz points out that's not precisely true, banks were lending more and more money, without doing anything to increase their ability to absorb losses, banks and other financial institutions were replacing their investments in traditional safe assets, like government debt, by higher yielding assets such as repackaged US mortgages. The banks overextended themselves in poorly regulated financial markets, indulging in high-risk lending in the belief that a housing bubble would never burst.
There are a few misunderstandings with that notion. 1. Any new manager will need some time to familiarise themselves with the organisation they are expected to run. When dealing with a management structure that can take even longer. Efficiency savings cannot be expected to happen at the same time. 2. Health care is not the same as a commercial business. The patient has no choice whether to engage in the transaction or not --when you're ill, you're ill-- and there is a huge asymmetry of information and power --especially when you're ill. As such you cannot run the NHS as if it were Sainsbury's. 3. The NHS remains the most efficient way of delivering health care. If there is a better way, no other country in the world has found it yet. The idea that private businesses in a free market economy are more efficient is a myth. We all remember the private enterprise Circle taking over the running of Hinchingbrooke hospital, do we? 'Cause the NHS was obviously making such a pig's ear of it, and surely a private business would know how to do it right? How did that turn out? Hinchinbrooke became the first hospital trust that the CQC has ever found to be “inadequate” in how it cares for patients. It's the lowest rating ever awarded to a hospital. Ironically Circle blamed NHS funding cuts (hang on, was this not the same firm that made the bold claim that it could get Hinchingbrooke running at a £70 million surplus in the next decade?). And of course it got to walk away from its failure. An NHS Trust does not have that luxury.
Fair enough, but its a better track to go down than the ideal of 'oh it'll sort itself out in the end'... Saying its the most efficient doesn't mean that its actually efficient in the slightest though, its like saying its least worst version. I seem to remember reading in various press reports that actually it was squashed because it was doing a lot better than they thought it would... It was in the Times for sure, but thats behind a pay wall, so The Mail will have to do.
Are you seriously arguing that the NHS is run on that basis? I think you're confusing it with the banking sector. Yeah, a bit like democracy. Want to get rid of that too? Sorry, but that is conspiracy theory. The CQC had particular concerns about A&E and medical care, while critical care, maternity and outpatients were judged as good. The Trust and Circle challenged the assessment, although Circle acknowledged that it did have areas to improve. The Trust raised 300 points of accuracy on the draft inspection report and the CQC accepted 65% of these before the report was finalised. It re-inspected the Trust in January 2015 and found that improvements had been made, although there was more to do in relation to the A&E department. But the important fact remains that Circle walked away, citing the 10% funding cuts and a sharp rise in demand on A&E --you know, the same pressures that every other NHS Hospital Trust has to manage, and because it was "no longer [financially] viable under current terms". If the place was doing so well as they claimed, surely they would stay put and simply challenge the report with hard facts and figures? Or is this the professional attitude we can expect from private enterprise: some operating pressures and a bit of bad press and they bail out in a huff? Hospitals cannot fail. You can't just close a hospital because it wasn't turning a profit or not performing well enough. It is an essential public service. Neither can you just walk away in a sulk just because funding is tight or you got an unkind CQC report. Suck it up and deal with it, like NHS Trusts have to. Instead Circle bailed when things got difficult and unprofitable, when it was their job to make things better and profitable -- leaving the Trust with a £9 million excess debt that the tax payer has to pick up.
Do the math. What comes first ... The chicken or the ... No wait, the public sector was born first or the private sector? This world is born from education, sevices, governments, hospitals, GPs? No. The world is born from one person creating something, and swapping it for something someone else creates. As the swapping increases, so it creates a surplus. The surplus pays for the public sector. I've seen in a previous argument, someone said "but the public sector workers pay tax too!" - as a response to the private sector paying for the public sector. Correct. But do the math. It all originates from businesses. From workers in the private sector, filtering through to workers in the public sector. The private sector DOES afford us the public sector, regardless of how rosey your socialist glasses are. Don't me wrong, I love Jeremy Corbin. I think his interview with Marr was the most honest from a politician ... ever?! But the only thing that truly worries me (and I am tempted to vote him in for a few reasons) is that he never once in his party speech, mentioned bolstering businesses. I felt he only appealed to the people 'feeling' down. No bad thing, but this world IS built on the backs of business - NOT whiny socialists.
Ooh quick add: It is OK to be a whiny socialist AND pro business. Its just we don't see that very often.
