** The NHS Thread **

[pete75]

The NHS is good value for money.

Overall maybe but not on an individual level. A lawyer friend calculated that the US system would cost her around 50% less than the amount of her income tax alone that goes to fund the NHS without even taking into account the cost of her private health insurance. The government should offer tax relief on the latter and try and encourage as many people as possible to take out private insurance. Everyone who does so is potentially saving the NHS a great deal of money.

[bovlomov]

The NHS is good value for money.

Overall maybe but not on an individual level. A lawyer friend calculated that the US system would cost her around 50% less than the amount of her income tax alone that goes to fund the NHS without even taking into account the cost of her private health insurance.

A quick internet search returns wildly differing figures for how much is spent on healthcare in the US - varying from state to state - and the 'value' depends on the individual's income and level of subsidy, risk and what they get out of it. It is difficult to make a fair comparison.

[pete75]

The NHS is good value for money.

Overall maybe but not on an individual level. A lawyer friend calculated that the US system would cost her around 50% less than the amount of her income tax alone that goes to fund the NHS without even taking into account the cost of her private health insurance.

A quick internet search returns wildly differing figures for how much is spent on healthcare in the US - varying from state to state - and the 'value' depends on the individual's income and level of subsidy, risk and what they get out of it. It is difficult to make a fair comparison.

She's basing it on what an American attorney she has dealings with pays for his medical insurance.

[Cunobelin]

Overall maybe but not on an individual level. A lawyer friend calculated that the US system would cost her around 50% less than the amount of her income tax alone that goes to fund the NHS without even taking into account the cost of her private health insurance.

A quick internet search returns wildly differing figures for how much is spent on healthcare in the US - varying from state to state - and the 'value' depends on the individual's income and level of subsidy, risk and what they get out of it. It is difficult to make a fair comparison.

She's basing it on what an American attorney she has dealings with pays for his medical insurance.

The budget is really secondary to the service in comparison.

The UK has a service which anybody can use at any time without fear of being refused or bankrupted because they do not have insurance or are rich.

Again there are varying estimates, but the fact remains that there are an awful lot of people suffering and dying because of exclusion from health services in the US that would be treated here in the UK without question

[Cunobelin]

I apologise for the language in this video, and also recognise there is an agenda behind the video, but this "Honest Government Ad" sums up the US for me

[youtube]08T-YsXRcCo[/youtube]

[Cugel]

It does always annoy me what industry sectors keep arguing how self-regulation is far more effective, completely ignoring that they said the same 10 years ago and that their self-regulation has achieved nothing. Yet they keep pushing it as the answer to everything and our governments keep believing it (ignoring the ever accumulating evidence that it does no more than protect the profits of those self-regulating companies).

There are arguments about the exact figures, but there is little doubt that the effects of bad air consume a large part of NHS funding, as do the effects of bad diet and inactivity - and that's before accounting for the lost productivity, societal breakdown and general misery.

I understand the case against the nanny state, but I think improvements can be made with very little intervention - and by removing government interventions that are currently a cause of ill health (transport policy being an obvious case). Some of the pleas for self-regulation are in fact pleas for the preservation of favouritism.

The state of general health within the UK is poorer than it need be because of many factors. Air pollution is just one; diet is another; lack of exercise another; an environment full of damaging chemicals another; growing poverty another; unsustainable work-stress another. All of those things (and several more) are due largely to the predations of the producer-consumer hegemony upon individuals. Producers are allowed to pollute and corrupt at no cost to their bottom line. Consumers are subject to incredible amounts of propaganda in the form of "there is no alternative" neoliberal policies and advertising via the mass media.

The purported extra amount needed by the future NHS includes a large percentage of it's overall cost due to the producers of our unhealthy consumer lifestyle avoiding responsibility for the deleterious effects (and their costs) on the health of the population.

****
One approach would be to make the producers of health-degrading junk pay the extra health (and other) costs they currently avoid. A better approach would be to prevent them from producing these health-degrading artefacts in the first place. However ....

As consumers we are but motes in the Brownian Motion of socio-political and economic arrangements over which we have very little control, if any. The Tragedy of The Commons prevents any individual actions from acquiring sufficient force to stop the mad consumerist juggernaut in which we're all entrapped.

In some ways, a less-than-ideal NHS is but the tip of a large iceberg already ripping down the side of the Neolib Titanic. The period of calm since the end of WWII seems ever more vulnerable to the forces that have made most of human history a brutal experience for we hoi-polloi.

Not that I would want to seem a pessimistic doom-monger.

Cugel

[Vorpal]

When I was at university in the USA, I did not have good access to health care. When I was really desparate, I went to a charity clinic that charged people on an income-based scale. It still cost as much as my weekly shopping budget, and no help for prescriptions. I had friend in the same situation. He didn't go to a doctor with an ear ache because he had no money, and ended up deaf in one ear from an infection.

Even when I got a proper job, and had insurance, going to see any medical professional cost money. With aproximately two GP visits, one specialist visit, and the cost of insurance, I still paid several thousand dollars every year in the late 90s for health care in the USA. When I moved to the UK in 2003, my health care costs halved. And I've never been an especially expensive patient, except maybe for having babies. I had two babies in NHS hospitals. My sister-in-law in the USA had a baby a couple of months before Mini V was born, and after the insurance paid out, they still had a $10 000 bill to pay.

[bovlomov]

My sister-in-law in the USA had a baby a couple of months before Mini V was born, and after the insurance paid out, they still had a $10 000 bill to pay.

I thought that type of thing had been if not stopped then at least ameliorated over recent years. And aren't there controls on extra premiums for people with a history of ill health?

I presume those are the sort of controls that Trump would like to see the back of.

(Sorry if this seems vague. No one on the internet can agree on what actually happens with health care in the US.)

[reohn2]

Governments over the past 30 years have not funded the NHS properly and burden the taxpayer with the likes of PFI whilst counting on NHS staff not to strike for better conditions and pay due to their emotional connection to the very important job they do.
At the same time the same governments have promised year on year growth of the economy whilst reducing income tax,most of the reduction has been to the better off in society.
This has lead to a widening of the gap between rich and poor the last income tax cut by this government lead to the poorest taxpaying earners having £70 pa increase in income whilst those on the higher rate of income tax netted £270 pa.

IMO we are a rich country but the wealth in he hands of individuals not country wealth in infrastructure,which the NHS is past of.Every time used the roads Ises many,many over sized private new expensive vehicles on the roads some ludicrously big,it's and indication of individual wealth,if only to afford the monthly payments.
The other end of the scale is people destroying their health with gut rot cider and fags or grossly overweight obese people due to bad eating habits and low quality foods full of sugar,salt and E numbers.

Clearly there is something sadly wrong with the way we live and wrong with a government or what hue,who won't take the necessary steps to put it right.

IMO the £2000 per household claim needed to ge the NHS upto spec is a ruse and a lead in toward private healthcare.
TBH I'm sick of governments who pander to multinational business such as the food and alcohol industry,and big pharma,etc,when their first duty should be to serve the people.

[pwa]

Governments over the past 30 years have not funded the NHS properly and burden the taxpayer with the likes of PFI whilst counting on NHS staff not to strike for better conditions and pay due to their emotional connection to the very important job they do.
At the same time the same governments have promised year on year growth of the economy whilst reducing income tax,most of the reduction has been to the better off in society.
This has lead to a widening of the gap between rich and poor the last income tax cut by this government lead to the poorest taxpaying earners having £70 pa increase in income whilst those on the higher rate of income tax netted £270 pa.

IMO we are a rich country but the wealth in he hands of individuals not country wealth in infrastructure,which the NHS is past of.Every time used the roads Ises many,many over sized private new expensive vehicles on the roads some ludicrously big,it's and indication of individual wealth,if only to afford the monthly payments.
The other end of the scale is people destroying their health with gut rot cider and fags or grossly overweight obese people due to bad eating habits and low quality foods full of sugar,salt and E numbers.

Clearly there is something sadly wrong with the way we live and wrong with a government or what hue,who won't take the necessary steps to put it right.

IMO the £2000 per household claim needed to ge the NHS upto spec is a ruse and a lead in toward private healthcare.
TBH I'm sick of governments who pander to multinational business such as the food and alcohol industry,and big pharma,etc,when their first duty should be to serve the people.

Yesterday I was looking at comparisons of what various UK governments have spent on the NHS, and head and shoulders over all the others (back to the 1970s) was your old friend Blair's administration. I share your contempt for the PFI stuff, but on the simple question of how much we need to spend to get what we need, they got it right. I remember them saying they were going to spend more and I remember performance improving. Those two things rarely go together.

[Vorpal]

My sister-in-law in the USA had a baby a couple of months before Mini V was born, and after the insurance paid out, they still had a $10 000 bill to pay.

I thought that type of thing had been if not stopped then at least ameliorated over recent years. And aren't there controls on extra premiums for people with a history of ill health?

I presume those are the sort of controls that Trump would like to see the back of.

(Sorry if this seems vague. No one on the internet can agree on what actually happens with health care in the US.)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA i.e. Obama care) was designed, in part, to reduce those sorts of fees, but the biggest part of it for people who were long term sick, or had a history of ill health was that there was a lifetime cap on expenditure. It used to be the other way around; insurance would stop paying at a certain point, telling people they had exceeded their funding.

For my sister-in-law, where the ACA might have made some difference is that many people are able to afford somewhat better insurance plans under ACA, so maybe they could have had insurance that covered a bit more. But under an identical insurance plan, I doubt that there would have been much difference in their expenses for the birth and hospitalisation.

[reohn2]

Yesterday I was looking at comparisons of what various UK governments have spent on the NHS, and head and shoulders over all the others (back to the 1970s) was your old friend Blair's administration. I share your contempt for the PFI stuff, but on the simple question of how much we need to spend to get what we need, they got it right. I remember them saying they were going to spend more and I remember performance improving. Those two things rarely go together.

First off,Blair and his adminstration is/was no friend of mine,Ive made that clear many times in political threads on this forum.

Second point,was PFI the most efficient use of money to improve the NHS?
I don't think so.

That said we are where we are,how do we get out of the hole we dug for ourselves?
It isn't by cutting taxes in whatever form,you don't get ow't for now't,but the rich and big business get more than the poor.
Until we see the ultimate destruction to the nation's prosperity as a whole because of such a loaded system,we'll not progress beyond a me first society.
In short the current dog eat dog neoliberal capitalist system isn't working for the whole of society,and as a result,soon or later it will collapse.

IMHO we are going the way of the US,and it's not healthy.

[pwa]

Yesterday I was looking at comparisons of what various UK governments have spent on the NHS, and head and shoulders over all the others (back to the 1970s) was your old friend Blair's administration. I share your contempt for the PFI stuff, but on the simple question of how much we need to spend to get what we need, they got it right. I remember them saying they were going to spend more and I remember performance improving. Those two things rarely go together.

First off,Blair and his adminstration is/was no friend of mine,Ive made that clear many times in political threads on this forum.

Second point,was PFI the most efficient use of money to improve the NHS?
I don't think so.

That said we are where we are,how do we get out of the hole we dug for ourselves?
It isn't by cutting taxes in whatever form,you don't get ow't for now't,but the rich and big business get more than the poor.
Until we see the ultimate destruction to the nation's prosperity as a whole because of such a loaded system,we'll not progress beyond a me first society.
In short the current dog eat dog neoliberal capitalist system isn't working for the whole of society,and as a result,soon or later it will collapse.

IMHO we are going the way of the US,and it's not healthy.

Just being playfully ironic describing TB as your friend. But his admin did increase spending like no other government I remember, and at the time it was seen as the government recognising that most people are willing to see more spent on the NHS if they also see real progress resulting from that. And performance did improve. Name another government that has done that.

[bovlomov]

Yesterday I was looking at comparisons of what various UK governments have spent on the NHS, and head and shoulders over all the others (back to the 1970s) was your old friend Blair's administration. I share your contempt for the PFI stuff, but on the simple question of how much we need to spend to get what we need, they got it right. I remember them saying they were going to spend more and I remember performance improving. Those two things rarely go together.

Only my experience, but quite a lot of it (too much) over the past dozen years or so.

District nurses are less experienced, less trained, harder to contact, less engaged, less motivated, more rushed and more badly managed. GPs are harder to make appointments for, more rushed and more prone to mistakes. A&E waits are longer. Ambulance delays are longer. In hospitals, nurses and doctors are fewer and more demoralised. Appointments for routine tasks are more delayed. NHS dentists are harder to find and the appointments are harder to make.

I'm no fan of New Labour and the way they funded hospital building, but NHS performance was better then - at least for the things that I noticed. And many of those weren't great even then.

[bovlomov]

TBH I'm sick of governments who pander to multinational business such as the food and alcohol industry,and big pharma,etc,when their first duty should be to serve the people.

Protecting the food and water supply, and ensuring breathable air should be the most basic requirement of government. Certainly, the food supply was of great interest to lawmakers from medieval times, who were constantly legislating to regulate weights and measures and to outlaw adulteration. This seems to be all too much for modern governments, who are content to let us eat rubbish and breathe poisonous air.

The food scandal merry-go-round has shown that we cannot rely on the state to monitor the food supply, even when (as in the horse meat scandal, and others) malpractice is an open secret within the industry.