flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 I have just listened to the news on the radio and I hear they have went against the public interest and raised fuel prices again. They are going to force more people off the road!! There is a hell of an outcry about this. Meanwhile the Cameroon Government drops the tax rate for the top earners from 50% to 45%.Older folk are going to be worse off ..... Working and Middle class have little to cheer. Remember Cameroon's claim.."We're all in this together" Not quite all it would seem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 I remember the last time they decided the NHS had to be streamlined, It resulted in front line staff, (Nurses, doctors, paramedics porters) not being replaced when they left to keep the wage bill down, Very few administrators lost their jobs as they could be justified because someone had to oversea the job losses. They stopped recruiting for student nurses and after a couple of years ended up having a big recruiting drive abroad (Philippines I believe was the biggie) and importing nurses because they could not fill the now serious under staffed hospitals. Now move on a few years and do the same but instead of Government cutting staff, let the private sector run it all, when it all goes pear shaped the government can make noises and postulate about it but also sit back and say... Well its not our problem any more, its private industry..... They are putting the worlds 7th largest employer in the hands of big business, No one will care until they need the service and its not available. Very true. A good example of the chaos that ensues when private sector takes over is what was British Rail. What a disaster that was/is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harpodom Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 The NHS is a complete and utter joke. If it were a normal company it would have been broke years ago - it needs massive reform. I am not 100% sure that these reforms are the way to go. Unfortunately the only people in the NHS that are any good and I must say do a fantastic job are the nurses and they always get the short end of the stick. The majority of doctors in every GP centre are not doctors they are just gate keepers, there sole purpose in live is to stop you costing the NHS any money. The amount of bureaucracy and paper work is insane. If your dying you will get the service but anything non life threatening - forget it. They dont care about your quality of life, go ahead a wait 6 months to fix your busted knee, you can still breath. I wish it would all go private, give me back my portion of tax and NI that goes to the NHS and let me go private. I bet the majority of working people in the UK would choose this option if they could. This is such a ridiculous statement it's laughable, thanks for cheering me up! No offence to nurses, they do a great job in very difficult circumstances. Aside from your clear dislike of dr's, have you heard of physios, OTs, pharmacists, speech therapists, orthoptists, podiatrists, radiographers, social workers, dieticians, psychologists, counsellors, phlebotomists, lab technicians..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 the NHS is dying and has been for years. The waves of reforms by successive govts have gone back and forth since the Thatcher/Major era when they introduced 'fundholding'. Blair and co cocked things up even more and now the coalition are doing their best. Trouble is, no modern day health system can exist as a purely free 'at the point of care' service. All 'commissioning' (eerily reminiscent of 'fundholding') does is shift deckchairs on an already sinking titanic. They (the pollies) should've left it alone or scrapped it completely and started again from scratch. At least in Aus, the punters (except pensioners and the like) are not averse to some out of pocket expenses for health care. Why should it be free? There's nothing inherently wrong with having private companies providing healthcare services. They do a good (excellent compared to the NHS) job of providing pathology and imaging services here. To answer your question perhaps look to USA to what can well happen. Private companies demand constant and increasing profits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 Jamjar, my Aussie husband says the best thing about the UK is the NHS. He thinks its a tremendous thing for a country to have and while it has its shortcomings/failings (and what doesn't eh) he believes strongly in it. Having had to spend time in hospital recently on a number of occasions, I have to say that everyone, from the lady serving meals to the nurses, sonographer, anaesthetist to consultant, their care was wonderful. I've met some grouchy nurses same as I have Doctors. And solicitors, shop assistants, bakers, vets and more..... The NHS is creaky, yes paperwork is beyond daft and its in need of an overhaul but honestly, it is a blooming marvel and I'd take our NHS over something like US healthcare any day of the week. Even when insured the companies effort into getting out of paying for care is insane. That system scares me and I'd never want us to go there. As for going private, I paid into private healthcare for years and never needed it. It was like throwing my money away. What we did when we wanted some stuff done quickly after it was cancelled was simply pay for it then and there and it was sorted. You can also arrange payment plans these days for some procedures. So its not like it isn't an option for many. If people can pay off a store card or a new car, they can arrange to do the same for a non urgent op or some such. Its what we've done on a few occasions now and have been happy using both NHS and private options as we needed/wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 I think this is a very unfair comment regarding doctors. I came back from Australia last year. Whilst there I had Post Partum Cardio Myopathy and Pulmonary Oedema. The doctor I have here now couldnt have done any more to help! When I first went, exactly the same drugs i got in Oz wernt available here and he contacted several Cardiologists to find out the best ones to give me, arranged with the hospital for me to see a cardiologist here and even contacted my Cardiologist in Oz to find out more about my condition so I could get the best treatment he could give. I would call that good service, maybe you have had a bad experience but please dont tar them all with the same brush!! Always great to hear when a medical practitioner will go the extra mile. Conveyor Belt consultation becoming all to common I'm afraid. At times get the feeling that we have to almost be our own doctor these days...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harpodom Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 To answer your question perhaps look to USA to what can well happen. Private companies demand constant and increasing profits. But they're culturally more efficient and streamlined than the public sector by sheer necessity. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of corporatisation of healthcare: there are some notorious primary healthcare providers in aus who are known to count tea bags. But the NHS is way too big for a one size fits all approach. There isn't enough dosh in the system to bring the NHS up to speed with the standard of healthcare in aus unless people ditch the fantasy of free healthcare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 The NHS is a complete and utter joke. If it were a normal company it would have been broke years ago - it needs massive reform. I am not 100% sure that these reforms are the way to go. Unfortunately the only people in the NHS that are any good and I must say do a fantastic job are the nurses and they always get the short end of the stick. The majority of doctors in every GP centre are not doctors they are just gate keepers, there sole purpose in live is to stop you costing the NHS any money. The amount of bureaucracy and paper work is insane. If your dying you will get the service but anything non life threatening - forget it. They dont care about your quality of life, go ahead a wait 6 months to fix your busted knee, you can still breath. I wish it would all go private, give me back my portion of tax and NI that goes to the NHS and let me go private. I bet the majority of working people in the UK would choose this option if they could. Don't agree one bit. A system akin to America would in time come into place. Private companies making billions through illness. Sounds obcene to me.Imagine the onus on doctors to over medicate to send folk to such and such a specialist while getting a bonus for doing so. Perhaps the best thing Britain has got going for it. Not to say it is perfect and that there can be no improvement but privitisation a big no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 But they're culturally more efficient and streamlined than the public sector by sheer necessity. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of corporatisation of healthcare: there are some notorious primary healthcare providers in aus who are known to count tea bags. But the NHS is way too big for a one size fits all approach. There isn't enough dosh in the system to bring the NHS up to speed with the standard of healthcare in aus unless people ditch the fantasy of free healthcare. Perhaps we should look at outcomes, care delivery and the number of mistakes made in Australian Hospitals and how those errors are tackled before we tickle them under the chin too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelP Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 The NHS was not wasteful or inefficient. If you look at the hard numbers, it was one of the most cost effective health systems in the world. Certainly compared to the bloated basket case of US healthcare. Then Blair started forcing competition and 'markets' into the system, pitting services against each other and creating huge armies of number crunchers, service managers and commissioners. Thatcher started the creeping privatisation, Labour continued it - with criminally wasteful private partnerships. The NHS will be repaying PFI partners for decades, and the billions awarded to multinational contractors for the useless NHS IT program have already been written off and ignored. And yet despite these massive financial and service failures, Cameron's answer is even more of the same. Private companies will cherry pick the profitable bits of the NHS - all money in the bank for those Tory MPs with interests in healthcare and pharma corporations. The unprofitable bits - the elderly and the chronically ill will be left 'in the red' and urged to make more cuts. Experience in Australia has shown that private health is not financially viable when you have a good public health service. Howard had to force people into private health with the Medicare levy and Labor is still propping up the private health insurance industry with $4 billion in subsidies a year. Sadly it looks like the NHS is finished as a universal healthcare system that treats people according to need, not their wallets. Your kids will be paying seven grand a year for a university course and you will soon be paying seven grand a year for your hospital and GP treatment. I'm sure loans will be available - or you can use your house as collateral. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 The NHS was not wasteful or inefficient. If you look at the hard numbers, it was one of the most cost effective health systems in the world. Certainly compared to the bloated basket case of US healthcare. Then Blair started forcing competition and 'markets' into the system, pitting services against each other and creating huge armies of number crunchers, service managers and commissioners. Thatcher started the creeping privatisation, Labour continued it - with criminally wasteful private partnerships. The NHS will be repaying PFI partners for decades, and the billions awarded to multinational contractors for the useless NHS IT program have already been written off and ignored. And yet despite these massive financial and service failures, Cameron's answer is even more of the same. Private companies will cherry pick the profitable bits of the NHS - all money in the bank for those Tory MPs with interests in healthcare and pharma corporations. The unprofitable bits - the elderly and the chronically ill will be left 'in the red' and urged to make more cuts.Experience in Australia has shown that private health is not financially viable when you have a good public health service. Howard had to force people into private health with the Medicare levy and Labor is still propping up the private health insurance industry with $4 billion in subsidies a year. Sadly it looks like the NHS is finished as a universal healthcare system that treats people according to need, not their wallets. Your kids will be paying seven grand a year for a university course and you will soon be paying seven grand a year for your hospital and GP treatment. I'm sure loans will be available - or you can use your house as collateral. Well put and in a nutshell a look at the Unbrave New World. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toolbox Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 Saw a pic of the British PM Cameron 'gloating' over the demise of the NHS. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-gloats-as-hated-health-767611 And then there's this... http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mps-fawn-over-queen-on-same-767604 How sad. Cheers, Bobj. Hi Bob, don't think he was gloating to be honest and I don't think this will lead to the demise of the NHS either. Think most people would agree some changes need to be made,things are so different now to what they were when NHS was founded. Not very good at long posts mate cba, so posted this artical I read this evening....it just about summed up where the UK stands today, agree with most of it and think it was quite damming of both labour and conservatives, makes me wonder if any political party can sort out the mess. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2118383/Still-hooked-spending-money.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harpodom Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 Perhaps we should look at outcomes, care delivery and the number of mistakes made in Australian Hospitals and how those errors are tackled before we tickle them under the chin too much. Have you got stats on that then? As we're talking oz vs uk or Medicare vs NHS, I'd say that overall both offer pretty good healthcare. From personal experience I'd say that British GPs do an amazing job under severe pressure from all sides (govt, PCT, patients) and are more committed to patient holistic care than their aus counterparts. The main advantages of the aus system are the easy availability of imaging and pathology (and other) services as well as the cultural difference that Australians don't baulk (much) at paying some out of pocket expenses for healthcare. The other major difference is down to infrastructure, ie hospitals. Too many hospitals in the UK are housed decrepit shambling buildings which are impossible to keep clean and impractically laid out. I think emergency care in aus is in a different league to the uk, as it seems to be modelled on the US approach to emergency depts staffed by true specialists, as opposed to the British approach of A+E staffed by failed surgeons. Aside from those differences I'd say the two systems are very similar, ie understaffed, overworked etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest17301 Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 How can any 'chief' think that a wage freeze for frontline staff is a reasonable idea!?? Its beyond comprehension. There are so many initiatives and schemes that the powers that be spend more time and money talking about how to do things and not enough actually implementing these ideas. They have meetings to decide how best to run meetings.....its criminal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
restless123 Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 US health-care spending Waste measurements Jun 17th 2011, 15:02 by The Economist online http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/us-health-care-spending Estimated waste in American health-care spending AMERICA has a talent for wasting money on health care. It has devised many ingenious ways to do this. A patient may see many skilled specialists, none of whom co-ordinate with one another. Payment systems are unfathomably complex and highly variable. Doctors order duplicative or unnecessary tests. The country excels at treating sick people and does a horrible job keeping them from getting sick in the first place. All these problems, however, are due to a simple, structural failing: the more services a hospital provides, the more it is paid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bunbury61 Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 A fair point, mate, but what will happen at the next general election? Will the British voters become more apathetic, or will they remember and chuck Cameron out? Time will tell... Cheers, Bobj. Bob .....you have been away too long ...........1997 the UK was virtually debt free ........in comes Blair and his mates , and leave us with a 1.5 trillion debt mountain .......and people want a bit more .....come on Labours plans for this parliament were as draconian as the tories ......THEY HAD TO BE ......we were in the S..T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The Ropey HOFF Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 £1.5 trillion pounds is alot of debt, what was it spent on? Camerons borrowing £126 billion this year, the massive cuts aren't having any real effect to the debt, the mind boggles with such huge numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobj Posted March 22, 2012 Author Share Posted March 22, 2012 Bob .....you have been away too long ...........1997 the UK was virtually debt free ........in comes Blair and his mates , and leave us with a 1.5 trillion debt mountain .......and people want a bit more .....come on Labours plans for this parliament were as draconian as the tories ......THEY HAD TO BE ......we were in the S..T. So, does that include putting the pensioners in a worse position? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17469252 Or, getting better salary increases? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073379/MPs-salaries-double-20-years--twice-fast-average-earnings.html Cheers, Bobj. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobj Posted March 22, 2012 Author Share Posted March 22, 2012 My last say on this issue: The land is very, very beautiful...The successive govenments running it are not. Possibly due; nay, most likely due to the general apathy of the British voters... Cheers, Bobj. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The Ropey HOFF Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 So, does that include putting the pensioners in a worse position? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17469252 Or, getting better salary increases? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073379/MPs-salaries-double-20-years--twice-fast-average-earnings.html Cheers, Bobj. There was also a 5 percent drop in income tax in the budget for the high earners, including the millionaires, so the poor devils will have even more thousands and millions to spend. The spin doctors said reducing high earners tax will help stimulate growth and robbing the pensioners is a no brainer, they have very little, so the toffs will think it doesn't really matter. What a sick society we live in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pintpot Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 .......1997 the UK was virtually debt free ........in comes Blair and his mates , and leave us with a 1.5 trillion debt mountain ....... That's just not true Not that I disagree that Labour spunked a load of money away. Actually that's a substantial part of the reason things are so tough. They could have helped out when the recession hit by deficit spending, unfortunately they had been so profligate in the good times they had nowhere to go Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The Ropey HOFF Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 That's just not true Not that I disagree that Labour spunked a load of money away. Actually that's a substantial part of the reason things are so tough. They could have helped out when the recession hit by deficit spending, unfortunately they had been so profligate in the good times they had nowhere to go Made me laugh that mate, that describes it exactly. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Andy Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 My last say on this issue: The land is very, very beautiful...The successive govenments running it are not. Possibly due; nay, most likely due to the general apathy of the British voters... Cheers, Bobj. " The general apathy of the British voters.." How are the voters to blame for what the governments have done, i know this seems a stupid question as governments are voted in but you have to vote for someone and generally the parties make promises during the run ups to the election and then just completely do u-turns so i would be interested to know why you think it is the publics fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest littlesarah Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Having read this thread very quickly, I'm left with a couple of thoughts: The first is that the UK & Aus systems are similar, however my experience is that much more imaging is performed here. In the NHS, we had to provide justification before we could request a plain radiograph or ultrasound scan, and to get a doctor to refer for MRI we had to be pretty certain the pathology couldn't be picked up by an X-ray or ultrasound. And then, for non-urgent scans, our patients would wait a few weeks. So, we got pretty good at performing other clinical tests to try to figure out what was going on. I still find myself requesting images much less frequently than my colleagues, and often the image they ask for comes back 'no pathology' and they end up going with the same management plan as I'd have instigated in the first place! Go figure, but doesn't seem all that efficient to me... Secondly, I think there is actually quite a bit of opportunity for practitioners to provide costly interventions and investigations with questionable justification in the Autralian system. Having said all that, I can see the merits of patients contributing to their care, and I think there are some really positive aspects of the Aussie system that could work in the UK, but which would need the British public to change their mindset. I think it's really easy to say "the NHS is inefficient, if it were a company it would go broke". Of course it would - a private company is charged with making a profit, which is why private podiatrists charge a mark-up on orthoses, many sell moisturising cream, footwear, etc, etc. In the area in which I last worked in the UK, our patients could barely afford decent shoes, so if they'd had to pay for anything else - guess what? They'd have stopped coming, their ulcers would have become worse, and they'd have ended up needing an amputation at a cost far greater than the cost of providing the preventative care in the first place. And I'm not exaggerating - there are good reasons why the rate of amputation not due to trauma has reduced over the last decade (and it's not because the population has suddenly become more healthy)! My experience of working in the NHS was of a lot of people working more hours than they were paid for, struggling to make the most of the resources we had, in order to provide the minimum intervention necessary to keep our chronically ill patients healthy. We didn't want medals, or even more pay; all we wanted was to be able to do our job. When I first started as a new grad, I earned less than the NVQ-qualified assistant, we were on numbers-based contracts, and GPs were responsible for community health service provision. It was horrible, and if things hadn't changed I would never have spent over a decade working in the public sector. From here, it looks like the mid-90s is happening all over again, and I'm very, very glad I'm out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petals Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Having read this thread very quickly, I'm left with a couple of thoughts: The first is that the UK & Aus systems are similar, however my experience is that much more imaging is performed here. In the NHS, we had to provide justification before we could request a plain radiograph or ultrasound scan, and to get a doctor to refer for MRI we had to be pretty certain the pathology couldn't be picked up by an X-ray or ultrasound. And then, for non-urgent scans, our patients would wait a few weeks. So, we got pretty good at performing other clinical tests to try to figure out what was going on. I still find myself requesting images much less frequently than my colleagues, and often the image they ask for comes back 'no pathology' and they end up going with the same management plan as I'd have instigated in the first place! Go figure, but doesn't seem all that efficient to me... Secondly, I think there is actually quite a bit of opportunity for practitioners to provide costly interventions and investigations with questionable justification in the Autralian system. Having said all that, I can see the merits of patients contributing to their care, and I think there are some really positive aspects of the Aussie system that could work in the UK, but which would need the British public to change their mindset. I think it's really easy to say "the NHS is inefficient, if it were a company it would go broke". Of course it would - a private company is charged with making a profit, which is why private podiatrists charge a mark-up on orthoses, many sell moisturising cream, footwear, etc, etc. In the area in which I last worked in the UK, our patients could barely afford decent shoes, so if they'd had to pay for anything else - guess what? They'd have stopped coming, their ulcers would have become worse, and they'd have ended up needing an amputation at a cost far greater than the cost of providing the preventative care in the first place. And I'm not exaggerating - there are good reasons why the rate of amputation not due to trauma has reduced over the last decade (and it's not because the population has suddenly become more healthy)! My experience of working in the NHS was of a lot of people working more hours than they were paid for, struggling to make the most of the resources we had, in order to provide the minimum intervention necessary to keep our chronically ill patients healthy. We didn't want medals, or even more pay; all we wanted was to be able to do our job. When I first started as a new grad, I earned less than the NVQ-qualified assistant, we were on numbers-based contracts, and GPs were responsible for community health service provision. It was horrible, and if things hadn't changed I would never have spent over a decade working in the public sector. From here, it looks like the mid-90s is happening all over again, and I'm very, very glad I'm out of it. Because we have a pick your own doc system here in Aus or give the flick if they do not do what people want, doctors tend to order more tests because people demand them. As we have to pay for them they are provided. Must say I am pleased they do more scans as my daughter may not be alive today. She had an Xray, nothing, a cat scan just a small shadow an MRI and it was a brain tumour. People here in Aus would not accept a Trust telling them they could not have treatment, just not used to it as before medicare it was all private and everyone is used to being in control of their own outcomes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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