Whether or not the NHS can do things better or be more efficient isn't really the issue. The issue is the existence of a socialised healthcare system in the first place. I can't speak from any kind of position of authority or experience in the matter, but surely the number 1 priority in recent years for NHS - pandemic and all its associated issues aside - is funding. You can't make a problem go away by throwing money at it, but we're talking about just getting funding levels back to where they should be.
"Hey, perhaps we can learn something from those really good healthcare systems in Europe that get 15% more funding than the NHS and consequently have twice the doctors and nurses, and three times the number of hospital beds per head of population. Except, you know, to give the NHS 15% more funding." It seems rather disingenuous to critique the performance of an NHS which was starved of even the basic resources to function for the last decade, especially during a pandemic which the government has almost systematically screwed up its response to. Especially when some armchair 'expert' is going on about 'lack of flexibility' when our Hospital Trust, the largest in the country, pivoted around to deal with this crisis in three weeks flat. Honestly, people have no idea. Hey, perhaps this is a nice example of astroturfing...
We spend less public money as a percentage of GDP than they US does on public healthcare. Could it be better? Sure. Perhaps investing in it would help.
Yep. And arguing that more money won't help fix the problems that aren't caused by underfunding feels like it deliberately misses the point that many of the problems are directly related to a lack of funding.
That would actually be astroturfing! If the goverment has set up fake twits on this or got an agency to do it then that's bloody serious and I would expect registrations. Will have to see how that one plays out.
Everywhere in the world spends less on healthcare than the US. The US system is expensive and inefficient and you have to did fairly hard to find anyone that wants that system somehow imposed here.
The UK is second lowest spender of the G7 and has been falling as a percentage of GDP From the ONS (Aug 2019): 1.Main points In 2017, the UK spent £2,989 per person on healthcare, which was around the median for members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: OECD (£2,913 per person). However, of the G7 group of large, developed economies, UK healthcare spending per person was the second-lowest, with the highest spenders being France (£3,737), Germany (£4,432) and the United States (£7,736). As a percentage of GDP, UK healthcare spending fell from 9.8% in 2013 to 9.6% in 2017, while healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP rose for four of the remaining six G7 countries. The UK’s publicly funded NHS-based health system contributes to the UK having one of the highest shares of publicly funded healthcare (79%) in the OECD. In 2017, the UK spent the equivalent of £560 per person on health-related long-term care, which was less than most other northern or western European countries, but a similar amount to France (£569) and Canada (£556).
Guarantee anyone who stands to make a profit wants the US system in the UK. Pretty sure it'd not take that much digging, either. Look at government votes on the NHS, see who voted for what, and have a look at the ones voting to cripple the system. They're most likely doing it to furnish their pockets with cash, one way or another.
Only as far as the former Health Secretary and de Pfeffel's leadership opposition Jeremy Hunt... who literally wrote a book on it
It won't happen but I can see why for political advantage the left will keep claiming that the conservatives will "privatise the NHS" as they always do. If you say it often enough and for long enough then people will belive it.After all in the last 41 years we have had 13 of New Labour and 28 of Conservative lead governments and it just hasn't happened. But keep it up.
So because something hasn't happened means it won't? Ok. Plus for the last 40 years we've been in the EU and not scrambling around for trade deals in the middle of a pandemic.
You mean saying things like "The inflexibility of our lumbering NHS is why the country has had to shut down" and "Covid-19 has been a reminder that the NHS is not the envy of the world"?
Nope, I'm just predicting that at the next election as at every recent one, the government will have again not "Privatised the NHS" and Labor will again campaign on "Last chance to save the NHS!"
He isn't Boris, or BoJo, or an affable rogue, or whatever image he's spent so long curating. His name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. The Tories campaigned in 2010 and subsequent elections with outright lies like 'Labour wrecked the economy and now you have to pay for it'. Labour were not responsible for the bad debt products being traded in the City, but that didn't stop the Tories claiming that it was Labour's fault that Tory policies wrecked the economy. And now that narrative is 'common knowledge': the last Labour government financially ruined the country. It's not true but apparently that doesn't matter.
So for the Purposes of this forum are we obliged to refer to leader of the opposition as Kier Rodney Starmer? It's a bit long winded having to use full names like this.
That's a straw man - I never said we should use full names, all I did was quote the man's full name. You're the one who took issue with using the name 'de Pfeffel', not me. It's part of the man's name and I think pretty much everybody reading understood who @RedFlames was talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man:
