ChaoticMusings

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

The NHS.

Maddog · Go Outside

jackthelad wrote:
The Commonwealth Fund conducts an analysis of the healthcare systems of 11 developed countries every few years. According to their latest report published in 2021 analyzing data primarily up to 2019, the US had an overall ranking of 11 out of 11 and the UK ranked 4 out of 11.
sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/05/26/a-comparative-analysis-of-the-us-and-uk-health-care-systems/

And we were 2nd to the Netherlands in care process.

We will never score high when the metrics give points for universal care.

Venezuela probably scores higher than us.

Maddog · Go Outside

jackthelad wrote:
Please if there's anything you can do to keep the UK in the modern world don't let the public schoolboys privatise the NHS!

Like the rest of Europe is?

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

A new report by lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published today shows that neoliberal reforms that weakened public healthcare systems were in part the result of EU policy pressures [1]. Private hospitals, meanwhile, are lobbying to further expand the role of the private sector and get a slice of the EU’s corona crisis recovery funds.
The new report – drawing upon documents obtained via ‘Freedom of Information’ requests – shows an alarming bill of health for Europe’s health care policy. The marketisation of health and long-term care, the push for Public Private Partnerships, and the public spending cuts encouraged by EU economic governance processes like the European Semester [2], have all contributed to the increased privatisation of health and long-term care services.

Neoliberal reforms have had disastrous implications for health and care systems’ ability to handle the pandemic. Health budget cuts have led to understaffing and reduced total hospital bed numbers. The rise of private hospitals goes hand in hand with a fall in intensive care beds, which are less profitable for private companies. A UNDP analysis [3] found that healthcare privatisation contributed to more deaths from COVID-19.

EU pressure to cut public spending (including via the European Semester process) has contributed to the commercialisation of the healthcare and elderly care sectors, ....
Same old privatisation disaster stories!
corporateeurope.org/en/2021/01/health-care-privatisation-and-austerity-left-eu-countries-ill-prepared-deal-pandemic

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

Privatisation of medical care results in fewer and fewer intensive care beds because these are less profitable resulting in fewer and fewer highly trained intensive care medical staff being trained and available.
“Greater health inequality is fostered as private, for-profit providers ‘cherry-pick’ lower-risk and paying patients, whilst higher-risk and poorer patients, or those needing emergency care, remain reliant on under-resourced (thanks to austerity) public health service provision.”
www.epsu.org/article/creeping-privatisation-health-care-european-union

Maddog · Go Outside

jackthelad wrote:
Privatisation of medical care results in fewer and fewer intensive care beds because these are less profitable resulting in fewer and fewer highly trained intensive care medical staff being trained and available.
“Greater health inequality is fostered as private, for-profit providers ‘cherry-pick’ lower-risk and paying patients, whilst higher-risk and poorer patients, or those needing emergency care, remain reliant on under-resourced (thanks to austerity) public health service provision.”
www.epsu.org/article/creeping-privatisation-health-care-european-union

Well there you go. Canada and UK are the bright shining beacons of healthcare in the western world..

Y'all should stop moaning so much..

Maddog · Go Outside

Oh, and it wasn't a great secret that the EU and UK had a massive shortage of ICU beds when covid hit. That was well covered..

At least over here. 😎

Syl · FIRM BUT FAIR.

Maddog wrote:
Oh, and it wasn't a great secret that the EU and UK had a massive shortage of ICU beds when covid hit. That was well covered..

At least over here. 😎

Covid came suddenly, I doubt any country was prepared fully.

The Nightingale hospitals were opened almost as soon as Covid started spreading here. The Manchester one was used, some of the others were not, but they were there if needed to ease the load on ICU beds in general hospitals.. NHS staff coped brilliantly in the circumstances, free of charge to patients, no expensive medical insurance needed..

NHS England » New NHS nightingale hospital to fight coronavirus

Maddog · Go Outside

Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:
Oh, and it wasn't a great secret that the EU and UK had a massive shortage of ICU beds when covid hit. That was well covered..

At least over here. 😎
Covid came suddenly, I doubt any country was prepared fully.
The Nightingale hospitals were opened almost as soon as Covid started spreading here. The Manchester one was used, some of the others were not, but they were there if needed to ease the load on ICU beds in general hospitals.. NHS staff coped brilliantly in the circumstances, free of charge to patients, no expensive medical insurance needed..

NHS England » New NHS nightingale hospital to fight coronavirus

They weren't. But there were different levels of emergency rooms already in place. Jack posted some link about how Europe didn't have many ICU beds. Neither did the UK, and we didn't have enough..

But one by product of spending more per capita than any country on the planet for healthcare is a bunch of hospital beds.

Is ot better? I don't know. Guess it depends if you need it and can get in that bed..

Here is what is the major difference between us and Europe. We are not forced to pay into our own insurance program, they are..

Our programs are optional. Want to make payments on a nicer car, a new motorcycle or larger apartment and skip buying insurance?

Go right ahead. As we like to say over here, "it's a free country".. We have a mentality that says adults can make poor choices thar will end up with bad results. We will never match up well statistically against systems where the ability to make poor choices is removed.

Syl · FIRM BUT FAIR.

Many people do have the choice here...they don't work, and that should be dealt with.
Our NHS is so stretched partly because there are too many people who have never contributed anything towards it, using it.

The people who do contribute don't pay nearly as much towards their medical care as you do...maybe cutting out the middle man, ie insurance companies, is a better way to go.

The NHS doesn't put a persons ability to pay before their medical care.

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

Maddog wrote:
Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:
Oh, and it wasn't a great secret that the EU and UK had a massive shortage of ICU beds when covid hit. That was well covered..

At least over here. 😎
Covid came suddenly, I doubt any country was prepared fully.
The Nightingale hospitals were opened almost as soon as Covid started spreading here. The Manchester one was used, some of the others were not, but they were there if needed to ease the load on ICU beds in general hospitals.. NHS staff coped brilliantly in the circumstances, free of charge to patients, no expensive medical insurance needed..

NHS England » New NHS nightingale hospital to fight coronavirus

They weren't. But there were different levels of emergency rooms already in place. Jack posted some link about how Europe didn't have many ICU beds. Neither did the UK, and we didn't have enough..

But one by product of spending more per capita than any country on the planet for healthcare is a bunch of hospital beds.

Is ot better? I don't know. Guess it depends if you need it and can get in that bed..

Here is what is the major difference between us and Europe. We are not forced to pay into our own insurance program, they are..

Our programs are optional. Want to make payments on a nicer car, a new motorcycle or larger apartment and skip buying insurance?

Go right ahead. As we like to say over here, "it's a free country".. We have a mentality that says adults can make poor choices thar will end up with bad results. We will never match up well statistically against systems where the ability to make poor choices is removed.

Using the word forced is emotive claptrap.

People here are also forced to pay for schools and education even if they never have children I think you can think of more.

"It's a free country" is another piece of emotive nonsense coming from a country with more permits and licences than anywhere else!

How about J walking what a ridiculous way to treat adults!

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

Syl wrote:
Many people do have the choice here...they don't work, and that should be dealt with.
Our NHS is so stretched partly because there are too many people who have never contributed anything towards it, using it.

The people who do contribute don't pay nearly as much towards their medical care as you do...maybe cutting out the middle man, ie insurance companies, is a better way to go.

The NHS doesn't put a persons ability to pay before their medical care.

People who don't work don't really affect it because there isn't a pot we all pay into for the NHS.

General taxation pays for it and what there is is too many old people like me and you.

The government have grossly underfunded the NHS as do all Tory governments and purposefully mismanaged it with an eye to privatisation in the American style.

The people don't want it but the investor class do.

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

List Of MP's With Links To Private Health Care Emerges.

Now this may come as a shock to some of you, but it turns out that some of the chappies running England may be on the fiddle. Union group UNITE have released a list of 70 MPs with proven links to private healthcare providers – and here’s the rum bit – all of these MPs voted in favour of the recent Health & Social Care Act, a bill that went a long way towards privatising swathes of the NHS. So… are you trying to say that… that they voted for something that would make them a bit richer…? But isn’t that kind of criminal? At all? Apparently not, although we’re buggered if we know why not.
www.theransomnote.com/commentary/news-commentary/list-of-mps-with-links-to-private-health-care-emerges/

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

Labour front bench takes £650k from health privateers – more than Tories

Starmer and co rake in cash from private health donors – twenty-five percent more than the Tories

Keir Starmer £157,500
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting £193,225
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper £231,817
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves £14,840
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner £50,000
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy £1,640
Total £649,022

The total accepted by Labour beats similar donations to the Tories by around twenty-five percent. Starmer and his health spokesman Streeting have vowed to extend the use of private companies for NHS services if Labour gets into government, while promising further austerity and refusing to say they will increase NHS funding to meet need, or increase wages for NHS staff, instead saying – just like Tories – that the NHS must ‘reform’ to be ‘sustainable’.

Both are also fully committed to the ‘Integrated Care’ programme of health rationing and incentivised cuts through withholding care – a direct import from disastrous US healthcare – that is wrecking the NHS even more thoroughly that previous Tory ‘reforms’.

www.google.com/search%E2%80%93+twenty-five+percent+more+than+the+Tories+Keir+Starmer+%C2%A3157%2C500+Shadow+Health+Secretary+Wes+Streeting+%C2%A3193%2C225&rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB1028GB1028&oq=Starmer+and+co+rake+in+cash+from+private+health+donors+%E2%80%93+twenty-five+percent+more+than+the+Tories++Keir+Starmer+%C2%A3157%2C500+Shadow+Health+Secretary+Wes+Streeting+%C2%A3193%2C225&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTkwODRqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

The NHS has been sustainable for seventy years and was created when the country was actually bankrupt after ww2 but greed and politics is what is making it unsustainable now

Syl · FIRM BUT FAIR.

jackthelad wrote:
Syl wrote:
Many people do have the choice here...they don't work, and that should be dealt with.
Our NHS is so stretched partly because there are too many people who have never contributed anything towards it, using it.

The people who do contribute don't pay nearly as much towards their medical care as you do...maybe cutting out the middle man, ie insurance companies, is a better way to go.

The NHS doesn't put a persons ability to pay before their medical care.
People who don't work don't really affect it because there isn't a pot we all pay into for the NHS.
General taxation pays for it and what there is is too many old people like me and you.
The government have grossly underfunded the NHS as do all Tory governments and purposefully mismanaged it with an eye to privatisation in the American style.
The people don't want it but the investor class do.

It causes resentment when people who have worked and paid in for 40 or 50 years can't get services because people who are either too damn lazy, or can't even speak the language, get priority.

We may be old, but all the years we were paying in we probably didn't need much NHS care....I know I didn't.

I am sure the Tory's would love everyone to have private health care...no doubt many of them have investments which would benefit them if we all paid privately either for insurance or actual medical care.

Syl · FIRM BUT FAIR.

jackthelad wrote:
The NHS has been sustainable for seventy years and was created when the country was actually bankrupt after ww2 but greed and politics is what is making it unsustainable now

There are 20 million more people living here now than there were when the NHS was founded.

Don't you think that has stretched the service somewhat?

"The population size of the United Kingdom is now more than 67 million people, which is the biggest it has ever been. In 1950, the population was 50 million: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projects that it will pass 70 million in 2026 and reach more than 73m by 2036."

Maddog · Go Outside

jackthelad wrote:
Maddog wrote:
Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:
Oh, and it wasn't a great secret that the EU and UK had a massive shortage of ICU beds when covid hit. That was well covered..

At least over here. 😎
Covid came suddenly, I doubt any country was prepared fully.
The Nightingale hospitals were opened almost as soon as Covid started spreading here. The Manchester one was used, some of the others were not, but they were there if needed to ease the load on ICU beds in general hospitals.. NHS staff coped brilliantly in the circumstances, free of charge to patients, no expensive medical insurance needed..

NHS England » New NHS nightingale hospital to fight coronavirus

They weren't. But there were different levels of emergency rooms already in place. Jack posted some link about how Europe didn't have many ICU beds. Neither did the UK, and we didn't have enough..

But one by product of spending more per capita than any country on the planet for healthcare is a bunch of hospital beds.

Is ot better? I don't know. Guess it depends if you need it and can get in that bed..

Here is what is the major difference between us and Europe. We are not forced to pay into our own insurance program, they are..

Our programs are optional. Want to make payments on a nicer car, a new motorcycle or larger apartment and skip buying insurance?

Go right ahead. As we like to say over here, "it's a free country".. We have a mentality that says adults can make poor choices thar will end up with bad results. We will never match up well statistically against systems where the ability to make poor choices is removed.

Using the word forced is emotive claptrap.
People here are also forced to pay for schools and education even if they never have children I think you can think of more.
"It's a free country" is another piece of emotive nonsense coming from a country with more permits and licences than anywhere else!
How about J walking what a ridiculous way to treat adults!

Mandatory? Not optional?

jackthelad · Musing at the Chaos

Syl wrote:
jackthelad wrote:
The NHS has been sustainable for seventy years and was created when the country was actually bankrupt after ww2 but greed and politics is what is making it unsustainable now
There are 20 million more people living here now than there were when the NHS was founded.
Don't you think that has stretched the service somewhat?

"The population size of the United Kingdom is now more than 67 million people, which is the biggest it has ever been. In 1950, the population was 50 million: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projects that it will pass 70 million in 2026 and reach more than 73m by 2036."

Of course it does and that very thing was talked about at the founding of the NHS.

We have fresh healthy water mostly full employment clean dry warm homes (apart from the few who always seem to fail) a great standard of health longevity so what has gone wrong?

Bad management.

It's no good just saying well there's more people now... that means there's a bigger tax contribution than ever".

Saying it's falling apart because well it just is means no one as usual is held responsible.

The people trying to destroy the NHS for their own gain are as usual already minted but they never satisfy their craving for more... at your expense.

Lots of ways for David Cameron for example to make lots more money but the NHS is seen as easy pickings.

It's all their in place paid for by me and you. Trained staff great machinery most hospitals modernised in recent times from our pockets so it's easy pickings.

Cameron already owns multiple homes has millions and should be told that's mine fuck off and go play with your money elsewhere but like I say The NHS is money for nothing because you already paid for it all!

The NHS is clearly ours every brick and every scalpel but the greedy have pounced and are stealing it from us.

These people need to be held accountable but won't be of course because well ... it just is.

Syl · FIRM BUT FAIR.

Syl wrote:
We moan enough about it, but sometimes they are brilliant.

So I had an eye test at Boots a month ago, they prescribed new reading glasses...they were useless, I could actually see better with my 10 year old specs.
i tried to get used to them, couldn't, so eventually I took them back, and after another eye test they decided I needed cataract surgery. I got a refund for my glasses (eventually, after a bit of a discussion) and last Thursday they referred me to a private eye hospital, even though I am having the op done on the NHS.
I went today for an assessment, and they are doing the op next Tuesday....a wait of. just. SEVEN DAYS.

-- Edited by Syl on Tuesday 12th of March 2024 07:01:53 PM

Once more...brilliant service thanks to the NHS.

I went for a post op check up on my cataract last Thursday, had a phone call today (Tuesday) and I am having my second eye done this Friday.

Same place, the private hospital that also treats NHS patients.

Hopefully it'll go as smoothly as the first op.