Have just been mailed by http://www.38degrees.org.uk
You need to sign the petition to help stop the cuts. 38 degrees did a good job at helping raise awareness of the sell off of forests.
Come on we all need to do something, people power and all that.

What cuts? Health spending is going up in real terms, unlike every other department except overseas aid.

mcboo – Member
What cuts? Health spending is going up in real terms, unlike every other department except overseas aid.

Shhhhh, you’ll wake the TJ…

“What cuts? Health spending is going up in real terms, unlike every other department except overseas aid.”

In real terms?
If these cuts continue you will be paying for your healthcare in a few years, if there any medical staff left too treat you.

In real terms?
If these cuts continue you will be paying for your healthcare in a few years, if there any medical staff left too treat you.

😆

I thought we all agreed that these online petitions didnt work ?

Whether or not you were for them.

Yes. In real terms. That might not fit with your pre-cooked view but it happens to be the truth.

I just had a minor op on the NHS, bust hand. Everyone was lovely to me, woke up in recovery with a nice chap from Manila cracking jokes and cheering us all up, everyone was great.

Except…..they wouldnt give me a slot in physio for 2 weeks after the pins came out of the hand. I thought “That can’t be right” so I went to my private physio who got things going straight away. And they wouldnt prescribe me antibiotics…..you can guess what happened next.

So, I dunno…..

Okay mcboo you can afford to pay for your healthcare. Thats great and i have no problem with that, how about the families who can’t.
It will be the disadvantaged and the lower incomes who are going to be the real losers, and that, in my book, is not okay.
The NHS will not survive if these cuts go ahead, do we want to end up like America.

S’not about cuts, it’s about the dim-witted idea of giving all the money to GP practices to divvy up.
Online petitions may/may not work but one e-mail/letter to your MP is weighted at about 10,000 constituents so get e-mailing if you care…

GPs are just going to give all of that money to the cheapest bidder for services. Say hello to Tesco Healthcare PLC.

No its more like Tesco devolving purchasing to individual stores (to make them more responsive to the needs of their customers). No central strategic planning, no bulk purchasing, resulting in a worse and more expensive service.

Say hello to Tesco Healthcare PLC.

or Waitrose or Virgin or O2….we should be so lucky.

See I really want to love the NHS. I bust my hand, did I use my work healthcare and go private? No, and it made me feel good. But ultimately I got half a service and luckily I had access to a second opinion. And it’s no laughing matter, I could have ended up losing full use of one of fingers if my physio hadnt gotten involved.

We used to live in Singapore. They have a mix of state and private hospitals, when you get sick you use a fund into which everyone pays to buy your treatment. You can go to the state hospital and get a very good service (that word again) with no frills or go private and get a private room and lots of extra toast. So the health providers, public and corporate, compete for your business and guess what you NEVER hear Singaporeans complain about their health provision. And its free at the point of use. That is the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore

Discuss

The proposed ConDem reforms are a long-planned (albeit badly-thought-out) yardsale – and the likes of Care UK, Cinven, Serco etc are desperate to get their hands on the profitable stuff (e.g. routine elective surgery). The plans have very serious implications for both workforce training & continuity in acute care. Nor will they improve the kind of thing that was seen at Mid-Staffs. And political platitudes about “competition” will mean fug-all when the sh!te hits the fan, believe me. We are heading towards a medico-insurance quagmire.

In short, the NHS isn’t perfect – but these reforms actually threaten to de-rail what it can do well.

bad science
To add to the debate…

Sorry, not had particularly good experiences of the NHS on multiple occaisions in the last few years, ridciulous waits for initial appointments, failures to sort serious but simple things, my son getting a hospital acquire dinfection in a hospital that had only been open four months (not surprising having watched the cleaning lady clean his cot down before his op. The lady in question was very hard working but completely inept at professional medicall level cleaning. Alright she was a private contractor no doubt but her failure was compounded by an NHS employee and senior member of the cleaning firm carrying out a cleaning audit about 20 minutes later, again all done very concientiously but incredibly amateur, instead of watching for a consistant and appropriate method of work from employees they were more concerned about dust on a ledge 7 ft off the floor, not somewhere my year old son as likely to come into contact with /rant).

NHS a generally well meaning bunch of people hobbled by group think inertia and amateurism, it’s far from perfect.

As for paying for private health care, already pay for all my dental and optical requirements and have had to use my work medical cover (which I’m lucky enough to have as part of my package) to either get treatment in a reasonable time or pick up the pieces dropped by the NHS. Serious reform is long overdue, probably not what this current government is trying to do though.

not surprising having watched the cleaning lady clean his cot down before his op

I don’t mean to jump on this… but post-op infection can result from any number of things. As for auditing, er, dust – that is part of their job. I’m not defending hospital cleaning, mind: the sub-contracting is often poorly specified and badly-done (thanks, DoH).

I’m sorry that your experiences of the NHS have not been good. If anything, that should increase your alarm at the current proposals – because I am betting that they will not improve matters.

mcboo / stumpyjon – you don’t know how good it is until it’s gone.

NHS reform is structurally driven, not politically-driven. We have an ageing and increasingly unhealthy population. That means running the NHS is going to cost more to run in future… Anyone got any ideas where the money’s going to come from? I notice that when a government puts taxes up the electorate tends not to like it.
There’s a reason why no other country has a free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare system for all.

There’s a reason why no other country has a free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare system for all.

Really but why’s there so many that do then?

“Tesco devolving purchasing to individual stores (to make them more responsive to the needs of their customers). No central strategic planning, no bulk purchasing…”

To be fair to Tesco (grocers), much of their roaring success derives from their strategic planning and bulk buying power. Why should we fear them applying their approach to some healthcare provision?

I, for one, have always been perfectly happy to pay as much tax as necessary to sustain and improve the NHS. Having previously been a very light user of the NHS, my partner is about to draw heavily on their Cancer treatment services. The impression so-far is a very high-degree of professionalism.

“Tesco devolving purchasing to individual stores (to make them more responsive to the needs of their customers). No central strategic planning, no bulk purchasing…”

so BOGOF deals on hip surgery then?

Hospitals are big expensive things, there is only so much competition you can actually have, break your leg, are you really going to have a quick check through the brochure before deciding which A&E to attend.

If you have to attend outpatients are you really going to travel to a hospital a hundred miles away or are you going to pick the one which means you can go to work after your appointment.

etc

NHS reform is structurally driven, not politically-driven.

😆

One of the themes of this thread seems to be “The NHS isn’t perfect”. I totally agree- so it’s probably a good idea to make it better, rather than worse.

On the subject of spending- I’ve had this rant before so if it sounds familiar feel free to skip it, but modern medicine is expensive and constantly getting more expensive. We keep people alive when they would have died, in countless different ways, and there’s absolutely nothing a doctor can do that’s more expensive than keeping someone alive.

In the face of constantly increasing costs, it’s not enough to avoid cuts, you need to choose to either meet those costs, or not. Or to phrase it differently- to save lives, or not.

Yep, http://www.38degrees.org.uk

and get this to number one on itunes too.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1jPqqTdNo[/video]

It’s better than doing nowt.

but post-op infection can result from any number of things. As for auditing, er, dust – that is part of their job. I’m not defending hospital cleaning

I know that and also accept that there will be times when hospital acquired infections will happen. What I was driving at was not that the people weren’t trying to do their job, they clearly were, they were working hard, just very ineffectually. I’m a process improvement engineer by trade (manufacturing), I’m trained to look at the way people carry out tasks. The issue was clearly a complete lack of suitable training compounded by very inappropriate (i.e. pointless) auditing procedures.

mcboo / stumpyjon – you don’t know how good it is until it’s gone.

That may come to pass. I want a functionning, cost effective NHS with clear morally and pratically grounded criteria for what is and isn’t covered under the free at point of use banner. At the moment the whole ediface seems to be a money pit, poorly managed, marketed as providing something it doesn’t (health care rationning happens every day regardless of what the politicans say). However I don’t think giving control to the GPs (who are effectively privately run businesses) is the right decision either.

I reckon the petition would be more effective if it was a paper book, chained to a post and at least 3 miles from the nearest point of car access………….