Nhs bill and forthcoming privatisation of nhs

[Riri]

Signed Sirzy

[phoenix]

you might want to read this
http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/what-w ... nk-youre-w

[cloud1240]

OECD figures show that healthcare in the US costs $7,500 per person per year. The OECD average is $4,500. In the UK it costs...

Yeah, yeah. If the private sector is so bad (that's also people like me who work damn hard and run small business') why don't you just stop using it and put your words into actions. Close your bank account, don't buy that new whatever product, grow your own food rather than use the supermarket, walk everywhere or go live in some commune or communist paradise.

It's exactly this kind of irrational political dogma that causes so much grief in the world whether its you and your anti capitalist clap trap or the right with their xenophobia and other bulls**t views. What the average person wants is just a health service that works and while its pulled pillar to post between opposing political crap it's never going to happen.

Thing is capitalism as a model that is being used by multinationals and banks etc is fundimentally flawed. You cannot for instance have infinite growth. By 2050 we will need one and a half earths to sustan our current resource needs. It's wasteful, corrupt and flawed as a concept. Business as a whole can function in a productive and co-operative maner that benfits both the business and consumer.

The biggest problem is soon as you get govened by profit and money you get corruption, explotation of both employees and consumers and a total disregard for enviroment. Very few companies take into account of enviromental cost - if this goes the cost (even if we could) would be 3 times the gross income of the world to pay for.

Health and profit don't mix - thats why the big pharma get away with charging so much for drugs. The cost of development is tiny compared to that of profits. They use poor science and research to get their products into market. skew data and maninpulate both health poffessionals and patients to get there products sold.

This is not a world I want to live in. Just see what the US food industry is like - Just watch Food Inc. For US health and where we're going watch Micheal Moore's film Sicko

[xyzzy]

OECD figures show that healthcare in the US costs $7,500 per person per year. The OECD average is $4,500. In the UK it costs...

Yeah, yeah. If the private sector is so bad (that's also people like me who work damn hard and run small business') why don't you just stop using it and put your words into actions. Close your bank account, don't buy that new whatever product, grow your own food rather than use the supermarket, walk everywhere or go live in some commune or communist paradise.

It's exactly this kind of irrational political dogma that causes so much grief in the world whether its you and your anti capitalist clap trap or the right with their xenophobia and other bulls**t views. What the average person wants is just a health service that works and while its pulled pillar to post between opposing political crap it's never going to happen.

Thing is capitalism as a model that is being used by multinationals and banks etc is fundimentally flawed. You cannot for instance have infinite growth. By 2050 we will need one and a half earths to sustan our current resource needs. It's wasteful, corrupt and flawed as a concept. Business as a whole can function in a productive and co-operative maner that benfits both the business and consumer.

The biggest problem is soon as you get govened by profit and money you get corruption, explotation of both employees and consumers and a total disregard for enviroment. Very few companies take into account of enviromental cost - if this goes the cost (even if we could) would be 3 times the gross income of the world to pay for.

Health and profit don't mix - thats why the big pharma get away with charging so much for drugs. The cost of development is tiny compared to that of profits. They use poor science and research to get their products into market. skew data and maninpulate both health poffessionals and patients to get there products sold.

This is not a world I want to live in. Just see what the US food industry is like - Just watch Food Inc. For US health and where we're going watch Micheal Moore's film Sicko

Even if I did agree with you 100% and I don't necessarily disagree with all you've said but would like to see the real evidence behind many of your statements what no one ever puts forward is a viable alternative that still means I can live in my house, drive my car, have electricity, run my pc, go on the internet, watch my TV and continue to have a modern lifestyle with built in scientific progress now and then i.e. all the things that the majority of people in a modern western country have and like. Any alternative will never get accepted unless the majority of the population go along with it. It may not be the world you (or even I) particularly want to live in but until someone comes up with a viable alternative then its the world we have.

I get incredibly p****d off about what is nowadays seen as important so celebrity culture, the fact that anyone with a brain is derided as a nerd drive me nuts. I was a child in the 1960's and remember getting up in July 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon still the most exciting thing I've ever seen. All of that human drive for exploration and science has gone it makes me very sad.

[al_leister]

Even if the fairy god mother delivered an envelope with a new system detailed inside no country could switch over in a day. Or even one year. Doesn’t even matter that we would be moving from a bad system to a good one.

The current system is a meccano set, designed and re-designed over time to ensure a particular outcome, and to move from it to a new system next week would mean a crash to the ground killing every pawn on the board.

The system requires gigantic change and this can only be successfully accomplished if all of Europe and the usa, at the very least, work in tandem. Even a little at a time.

Of course the interest of the ruling elite, which includes heads of corporations, institutionalised religion, monarchies, and their public representatives like pop and film and football stars, will wish to protect their interests so an agreement is unlikely to be made anytime soon.

Every individual can though start tweaking the system a little each day until the new construction represents and resembles the great populace of decent human beings. This tweaking can range from a blog on a website to a letter to your MP.

The greatest effect may prove to be a shift in mindset and greater knowledge of the politico economic system which rules all our lives. If this knowledge is discussed and debated in the golf clubs, pigeon clubs and public spaces, as we are on this site regarding TEST STRIPS, then we may indeed catch sight of a better world.

Regardless of how much money I have or how comfortable I am, or not as the case may be, my intellect short circuits when I witness such blatant inequality and deliberate manipulation of education, healthcare, public services and the media in the endeavour of sending all the profits/savings/value straight up to the one-odd-percent of the species.

As a diabetic I am compelled to voice strongly my objections when the government is hell bent on destroying the NHS. The previous government of course laid the foundations for this destruction.

We can all live decent, comfortable lives absent from greed and waste.

[al_leister]

http://www.monbiot.com/2010/07/12/sending-off-the-ref/ (written may 2010)

Paraphrase......

Last week the health secretary Andrew Lansley sought to shift responsibility for improving diets and preventing obesity from the state to society. He blamed the problem on low self-esteem and deplored what he called “a witch hunt against saturated fats, salt and sugars”(1). In future poor diets would be countered by “social responsibility, not state regulation.” From now on, he announced, communities will be left to find their own solutions. The companies which make their money from selling junk food and alcohol will be put in charge of ensuring that people consume less of them. I hope you have spotted the problem.

This is care in the community for public health, whose outcomes will be similar to those of the previous Tory government’s care in the community for mental health. Volunteers have neither the power nor the motivation to fight slick, well-financed PR professionals working for big business.

Lansley would do well to read the analysis published by the Government Office for Science. “For an increasing number of people, weight gain is the inevitable – and largely involuntary – consequence of exposure to a modern lifestyle. This is not to dismiss personal responsibility altogether, but to highlight a reality: that the forces that drive obesity are, for many people, overwhelming.”(2) Advances in neurobiology, it argues, show that the hunger drive is far stronger than “satiety cues” (knowing we’ve eaten enough), and easily exploited by advances in taste technologies and presentation.

The same study points out that obesity rates are much higher among the poor than the rich; that they are likely to double between now and 2050(3), and that, by then, the problem will cost the NHS £10bn a year at today’s prices, and the economy £50bn. This was all before the food companies were let off the leash. So much for deregulation saving money.


So here’s what’s going to happen. The failure of big business to police itself will cause a series of crises: in public health, social provision, quality of life, the environment. The state will have to shell out billions to put them right. Eventually (think of BSE, the railways, tobacco advertising) the government will be forced to re-regulate, but not before large numbers of people have been hurt. In the meantime we’ll be instructed to pull our socks up and take responsibility for issues out of our control. It’s an age-old story from which governments learn the square root of nothing. It happens as predictably as a punch-up when the referee quits the pitch.