The NHS is actually a cheaper system than private health care. It does not need a massive bureaucracy to process insurance claims. It is not driven by profit --even where it has a monopoly position. It concentrates on prevention as well as cure. The NHS works, but the Conservatives still harbour the same dream of capitalism that came crashing down around our ears two years ago. Every privatisation motivated by "saving money" has in fact delivered worse services at a higher price. The biggest lie is the pretext of "patient choice" when research has show time and again that patients do not want choice. The just want the best health care when they need it. When they are ill, they do not care about choice, value for money or capitalist ideology. They don't want to have to shop around or make decisions. They just want to be made better, no expense spared.
I think this is the thin end of the wedge: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14442608 Social enterprises are effectively private companies that are completely outside of state control. They don't have to conform to any of the standards that the NHS does, so the quality of their care and their safety is questionable. They don't have to publish their accounts, they aren't part of Transparency and yet this is what NHS providers are being encouraged to become.
People who share that sentiment have not really thought it through on a personal level. What it really means is: You can't afford the NHS. Can't you? Think you can get your health care somewhere cheaper? If so, please let me know.
There are different classes of NIC's. A JSA non-claimant as they're called gets class 3, or 2. The one that ensures continuity for the state pension.
I really do wish we had some sort of the NHS over in America. However it wouldn't be very viable given our hilariously impossible outstanding debt. Well, right now anyhow. Part of the cost would be due to the patented medicine laws which drive up medicine cost, but hey it's still expensive for what it is.
Privatisation in general grinds my gears. The great "idea" (excuse) being private companies are better at keeping costs down and services to a high standard because of competition. Costs are lower therefore the price will remain lower as a result. Completely forgeting that private corporation is first and foremost interested in profit. Also forgetting that some things that are privatised are natural monopolies. Like with utillities. Gas and electric consistantly rise above inflation year on year usually with the excuse of wholesale energy prices rising just recently. But when wholesale prices go back down somehow consumer price stays at the same level or decreases disproportionately to the level it went up at. It basically comes down to the same thing with the NHS if turned private the UK will become a state where health costs will rocket in the interest of profit And care will depend on what healthcare policy you can afford. Nationalised companies are worried about poverty (if the tories are not in power), social impact etc and are accountable to the people via parliament. Private companies are interested in profit and are accountable to shareholders (who are interested in profit) So with that information conservatives come to the conclusion that privatisation will improve srice and lower costs. The tories aren't going to openly destroy the NHS (even though they'd like to),as it would be political suicide, but instead they are going to set it irreverisbly rolling towards privatisation. I would hope that the electorate weren't fooled into thinking that these nudges are in the interest of choice, efficiency etc. And sees them for what they are; callous attempts by a heartless elitist party to eventually eliminate a service that takes up about a fifth of government spending so that they can have an excuse to lower top rates of income tax closer to a flat rate level. This government can basically get way with what it wants. This is mostly due to politicians evolving into the pinnacles of deceit. Metaphorically politicians have changed from Arnies into T-1000s. Politicians like Cameron know that they won't get what they want by trying to pass huge controversial reforms but instead they will make taps and nudges so it happens without the vast majority of the population realising its happening. Which bring me to the question why can't epople see what is going on.
So you would rather nothing was done to reduce the blackhole that is the NHS budget, which labour threw money at it each time. Cuts are needed, if a % of the nhs is privatised and leads to savings and cost effectiveness it leads to a better recovery for the economy and a better run national health service.
Yes but changes like this very rarely do work. Regardless of that it is even rarer if it is changed back. The Condem government has been in for just over a year and have managed to pass legislation to revolutionise the NHS, what are they going to do with the next 4. It has been made a "black hole" partially by the overuse of private interest in the NHS. It can be seen that when the private sector meets the public sector the public sector almost always gets ripped off, that an issue to adress. Budget policy being adressed is another. Punlic bodies have been encouraged to spend every penny that they have in order to aviod budget restricted the following year. The veiw in dealing with public bodies such as the NHS tends to involve looking and changing the macro aspects instead or the micro aspects. It's a complex system of delicate parts and governments are always looking for the condom solution.
The nhs is not going to be a easy fix, when you see news of patients being treated in private hospitals as the delay for the nhs is too long, cheaper for the health service to pay for private surgery. Considering all the options we can have of goverment at the moment, the conseratives are the better option of out a bad selection. NHS will have to follow other public sectors and become more efficient with their funding, ideally keeping front line services while reducing and improving back line services. Its a hard job for whoever has to reform the service but choices need to be made.
That is highly debatable. The conservative's front bench is made up of privately educated people from well off backgrounds and they're meant to make decisions that fit the interests of all. Basically using a peiod of economic instability to their advantage to enact their ideology. They cut housing benifit countrywide adding costs to low income, disabled or unemployed households (which cant make ends meet as it is and are just existing). Whilst wanting to decrease the amount of tax paid in the pound for those earning over 150k. Whilst inflation is rising on necessary goods. Tories are to cut the benifits given to the terminally ill. Triple tuition fees. I think that these healthcare reforms will just nudge the NHS onto a road of no return. It will be dismantled under various excuses and uk healthcare will be fully private come 2025-2030. Cameron is basically 80s guy from futurama. But then again I don't know if I could tolerate faceless Ed recieving the title of PM.
You think that's exclusive to only Tory politicians? Guess what; politics is an upper class job. You think Labour are full of working class people? That Tony Blair and Ed Miliband are/were working class? It's a big myth that Tories = only for the rich, and Labour are the cuddly cute party who love the working class. In-fact it's more than myth; it's utter crap Labour doubled the tax rate on the poor, increased taxes wherever possible, done next to nothing about tax avoidance and evasion (the Tories have done more to tackle it in 1 year than Labour done in 13 years), they poured money into some public sector projects wasting billions, they doubled the amount spent per school pupil with the net result that education got WORSE and classroom standards stayed the same. They overspent even when times were good, with the inevitable consequence of cuts and tax rises in the future - which they knew would harm the poor worst (since unfortunately cuts won't affect the rich, and higher taxes on the rich will simply make them ring up their accountant to avoid paying much more tax... Labour knew full well who their overspending would inevitably hurt). They threw money at poverty - and like schools - things just got worse. We're now at a point where the interest on our debt is more than the day-to-day running costs of our schools. We're now in the middle of a debt crisis and spending more (i.e. the Keynesian approach) to recover has been shown across the West to be an invalid approach to economic recovery. Despite this, Labour's amazing plan is to increase our debt. Brilliant. Yep, Labour are a true party of the working class (The Tories aren't much better of course, but at least they're clear that they prefer smaller Government and think that people should have more responsibility for own their lives and that Government should have less; compared to Labour who claim to be working class when it's clearly untrue) And it's also worth pointing out that the last working class PM was... John Major, a Tory. Labour haven't had a working class leader in power for over 4 decades. The country lost 4.9% of GDP during the outright-negative-GDP quarters of the recession, and we're about 5% in GDP lower than we would have been if we hadn't entered recession at all (since going into recession and coming out of it has seen much slower than usual growth). That's close to 10% lower than where we would have been without the (granted, unavoidable) recession. Despite that, the cuts in 2011 are at around the same level that Labour were planning to make in 2011 (£7 versus £6 I believe). The total job losses to the public sector is forecast to be around 5.6% of the public sector; which is less than the amount of GDP this country is poorer due to the recession (4.9%+5% > 5.6%) If it is ideological cuts aimed at reducing the size of the public sector in a disproportionate manner (which it isn't), the Tories aren't doing a very good job at it. Cuts are needed. Care to suggest other cuts and/or tax rises to sort out our deficit? I earn nowhere near 150k, and I'm in favour of scrapping the 50p tax rate. It's a silly, politically motivated tax and even Labour were clear that it was originally a temporary tax (Alistair Darling said as much when introducing it). Heck, I was in favour of scrapping it when I had a negative income (being a student). As for "decrease the amount of tax paid": tax cuts != fall in tax revenue (tax paid). The Government are looking into whether the 50p tax rate is raising as much as forecast (£2.4bn). In the long run, the 50p tax rate could easily be leading to the rich moving some of their assets abroad. And thus what Labour essentially done by introducing the 50p tax rate is to give the rich a tax cut Personally I think that in the short term (1-3 years) the 50p tax rate will raise *some* revenue, but not the £2.4bn forecast. But in the long term, having a tax rate as high as 50p will amount to a tax cut on the richest, IMO. If higher taxes always led to more revenue, we may as well jack up the tax rate on the rich to 99%. That'll sort out all our countries problems overnight (Where's the troll face picture when you want it? ) I hope not, but I guess we'll see.
Although as an NHS employee I wholeheartedly agree that there could be some efficiency drives and reduction in lumbering bureaucracy, I think it is also easy for you young, healthy person to argue for cuts in the health service. You are not unbreakable. One day you may need the NHS badly. It is a myth that private health care is more efficient than the NHS. It works along very different parameters for one: to deliver good enough health services at minimum cost for maximum profit; whereas the NHS has a legal duty to deliver the best possible care within a given budget. It is a little-known fact that the MRI machines at our local private hospitals are not as good as those at our NHS hospitals, for instance. Because private health services essentially make a living off the stuff they do, they may perform services that are not strictly necessary, thus driving up the price of insurance, whereas the NHS wil not do anything that is not clinically justified. The only way private health care works within a national health context is to regulate their services as is done in Europe: to legally bind them to a minimum standard of care and cap the price they can charge for it. The only way to maximise profit then remains to improve efficiency. But if you look at Lansley's big plans, such a regulatory body is just the bit that is missing. tl;dr: now you want a cheaper, leaner NHS. But when you suddenly find yourself diagnosed with, say, Lymphoma, then you'll suddenly want the best health care possible, spare no expense. At least you won't have to pay for it --it's your citizen's right. In private health care, you have to trust your insurance company to pay up to save your life. But when has insurance ever paid up without a fight? You'll have to trust doctors to make decisions in your health interests, rather than in the interest of the cold, hard bottom line. But what company has ever put customers before profit?
I know plenty of companies who do this; especially smaller companies (putting customers front and centre is key, especially to new-ish companies who are still growing/starting up). Obviously profit is needed into the longer term otherwise a company can't service/benefit its customers, but that's not to say the two are mutually exclusive. Heck, many companies do both; i.e. look after customers and profit (both are related in the private sector, of course; if you have a kick-ass product/service that benefits customers, you'd better hope you make a profit else you will shut down and so can't benefit your customers). And I don't see much wrong with this? An example that comes to mind is Duncan Bannatyne who made his original millions from care homes. At the time care home standards were poor. His care homes were better and thus more sought after. The result being that the customers were happy (better quality care) and Bannatyne was happy (more profit). So that profit motive helped his customers to receive better quality care. A win-win, surely? I'm not comparing this to the NHS debate (as I don't believe more private sector involvement in the NHS will always bring positive results), I'm just pointing out that the quoted bit of your post seems to be missing the point a bit? The unfortunate problem with the UK political system (FPTP) is we typically swing from a 'left wing' to 'right wing' government, and back again - every decade or so. This causes some people to believe that the two ideologies are mutually exclusive; i.e. capitalists can't have social tendencies (and vice verse). Heck, even those evil baby eating corporate City-based bankers and VCs can (potentially ) be a force for good (providing funding to companies to grow and expand, etc). Meh, I know things are a lot more complex than 'private sector = good in 99% of cases'; I'm just not sure that 'private sector = evil people chasing money' is valid.
That's certainly possible, but the reality is more akin to private health care in the US. Six times the cost of the NHS, it produces slightly worse outcomes.
Quite possibly. As I say, I'm not arguing that all privatisation is good; nor do I think the NHS should be privatised. I think you're right that a reduction in inefficiency and bureaucracy could be needed, but that the Tory measures aren't exactly the right way to do this.
private health care is good but you have to pay out the wazoo to get it.. were fully covered but the cost per month for that coverage is headed towards a thousand dollars a month fully covered is prescriptions at $5- including a 6k+ monthly bill they swallow.. free ambulance, emergency with no deductible and general care and we get to see the best doctors of our choosing.. including doctors at stanford in the organ transplant department (those bills are enormous too) so were getting our monies worth.. care is pretty much instant too and we have a good set of doctors who know us personally what you guys have is pretty awesome imo.. have the tax payers fund the care instead- but it's probably a lot like people on medicare here.. unsustainable in an economy like this.. we might be seeing the beginning of the end here as well- last couple days everyone's taken a beating again in the market I hope you guys can fix the problems with the nhs.. private care is good but you have to be able to afford it.. the way it is now here too, when you don't have enough people putting into the system, it all goes down the drain maybe the economy will hold up, but if were being realistic
