Privatised NHS? Paying for insulin?

On what grounds? The NHS still pays for it, issues instructions, takes ultimate responsibility. It is similar with national screening services such as bowel cancer, breast cancer, retinal eye screening and so forth. They each have different service providers, under contract, but each has to follow NHS instructions and each is paid by the NHS.

 

Not so. There is not the direct control; the contracts are secret for commercial reasons; the private contracts are not covered by FOI legislation; and you would find it difficult to take any action in the event that you had received sub-standard treatment.

 

I fully agree with you on the NHS, in fact believe it or not the Hospital and A&E closures were actually started by the last Labour government when they went down the PFI route and decided to create all of these super hospitals that were in fact not built for purpose because they just were not big enough. The whole idea was to treat people as quickly as possible and get them out, obviously now we can see this has failed because they cant get the patients out quick enough because what care the NHS did provide for the elderly and other infirm people in specialist geriatric units and hospitals is no longer there because these units were shut down. I can think of half a dozen at least within a radius of 12 miles of me and now there isn't one, thank you Tony Blair. But the truth is the Tories would have done the same think.

As for austerity and paying back all the money we borrow, there isn't a government on this planet that can raise enough taxes to pay for the running of its country and infrastructure they all have to borrow money. What we borrowed to bail out the banks after the 2008 crisis was a drop in the ocean, a blip in comparison to what we borrowed to pay for WW1,or in the great depression or WW2 for that matter and which the Tories would have had to do as well if they were in power at the time. All this clap trap about they inherited all this debt and its all the fault of the last labour government is total BS, So the truth is as you say its a decision the politicians decide to make. Sorry i've gone on a bit i get carried away when this issues get raised

 

Too right - which bunch of parasites should be given our money next? Really hard decisions - should it be more subsidies to landowners, or should corporation tax be reduced (again)? How can we funnel more public money into private pockets? How can we rip ordinary people off and laugh in their faces while we are doing it?

 

No. Lots of hospital closures and cut backs happened under St Thatcher. Labour restarted investment in the NHS services when they came to power in 1997. They used PFI to fund it.

 

If you live in these areas you may be interested in reading this and hmmm maybe doing a search on Conservative overspending in the 2015 election campaign and how much they have spent advertising on the likes of facebook. The winner of our mayorial election spent £1million when the cap is set at £150,000. Rules for some and an exception for the right person is allowed.
The 14 areas asked to enact the cuts are: Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; Cheshire (Eastern, Vale Royal and South); Cornwall; Devon; Morecambe Bay; Northumbria; North Central London; North Lincolnshire; North West London; South East London; Staffordshire; Surrey and Sussex; Vale of York and Scarborough and Ryedale.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/h...eaked-campaigners-election-2017-a7775571.html

 

Like cutting funding per head in real terms you mean?

 

The narrative is important. It is ALWAYS the debt and not the assets the debt buys which are handed on to children and grandchildren. It is ALWAYS the tax burden and not schools hospitals and vital Public Services; like, for example, er, 20000 Police Officers and a 1000 firearms officers.

 

Yes but PFI wasn't so clever.

 

I thought the proposal was to keep them were they are now and not to cut them further. I may be wrong.
Tax revenues in cash terms depend not just on the tax rate but also the level of activity in the economy. It is not the simple relationship you suggest.

 

I think you mean it's a fiddle. Competitive cuts lead to zero

 

Has anyone actually sat in a hospital and watched what goes on?
Hordes of people shuffling around with paper files. I even offered to take my mothers down with us when we last went but oh no we had to wait for someone to carry it instead... paper files in 2017 really?
My mother had some pre-cancerous skin lesions removed and we went back to get the dressings changed.
The nurse.. put on her disposable apron
Got about 8 items out of the drawer including a pair of vacuum packed scissors.
Put two dressings on my mother's leg.
By the time we left she had a carrier bag full of waste then she added her apron to that pile.
Seriously for 2 dressings? The amount of waste in manpower and materials in the NHS is quite mind boggling. Something needs to change. It is completely unsustainable both in terms of the environment (all that plastic packaging waste) and financially.
How much extra tax would you all want to pay so someone else can wander around hospital corridors delivering files?
It is our money that is being wasted here not the NHS's.

 

I find it reassuring that paper files are still in use, we seen what happened a few weeks back when the NHS computer systems were hacked.

 

I think it's the League of Friends who sort out the files in our local hospital. Maybe paper files are better given the recent cyber attack. A lot of investment was wasted on NHS IT systems under Labour and Conservative Governments.

 

Well in 48 hours it will all be over!!

 

Thank God. Sorry, forgot I'm an Atheist. Thank goodness.

 

I'm not going to argue this point because we can argue about the NHS until the cows come home and still disagree. What I will tell you is that where I live the hospitals have ALL been closed under a Labour government, and if they were serious about making sure the NHS was run properly they would have reversed the Tory policy on trusts and gone back to some form of health authority control.

Since PFI in this area yes they built a new hospital and closed 4, now some have to travel 12 miles to hospital, and some 15 miles depending on which treatment you need. Oh and the actual bed numbers now compared to before all these PFI changed are 26% less. Yes we have one new swanky hospital but its not big enough and they were told this before they built the flaming thing. My family have worked in local healthcare here since the mid 70's and we can all tell you that both Tory and labour have shat on us where health is concerned. However out of the two there is no way would I trust a Tory government with the NHS.

 

My new local hospital will also have fewer beds when it opens. As well as being more difficult to get to.