[Closed] Criticism of the NHS: What are they on about?

They have to report it as a failure as that justifies private "investment".

Its quite simple.

The Tory party, and their friends in the right wing press, basically [b]HATE[/b] the fact that '[i]their[/i]' taxes (which they sometimes even pay!) goes towards keeping poor people alive. Even though they've probably brought it on themselves with their Lambert and Butler, and their ugg boots and their cheap supermarket multipacks of Stella, and their big tellies and pizza deliveries.

Whats more, their corporate mates don't even make any (well... not that much) cash out of it (yet) to fill their offshore tax-dodging bank accounts

So it has to end!! And fast!!! So they undermine the principle of the NHS at every turn, to justify destroying/privatising it

you're not wrong, the Daily mail is, about more or less everything.

(you can use it as a back-up moral Compass)

and, what Binners Said.

NHS Wales replied: [url= http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/healthandsocialcare/2014/141020daily-mail/?lang=en&&&&&& ]http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/healthandsocialcare/2014/141020daily-mail/?lang=en&&&&&&[/url]

Short answer: ALL parties use the NHS as a political point scoring tool. Until this stops things won't improve hugely. There are difficult decision ahead in some ways re cost of healthcare and what is provided and not. There are also efficienc savings to be made in many areas with the right approach.

Most NHS staff try their very best.

Jet (NHS doc)

binners is on the right track

The mail is a hateful, hateful! rag, nothing good to say about anything!

+ what binners said

The NHS has been brilliant with me and my condition (Leukaemia), great treatment and fast too, no hanging around at all, tests and biopsy's done there and then and fast results and onto chemo there and then. Nice caring and helpful Dr's, nurses and staff throughout.

I really can't fault them, in again tomorrow to see my consultant.

Negative headlines and stories sell more papers than positive ones.

chvck that article is interesting, talk of 31 days from diagnosis to starting treatment.

From the point I had my diagnosis I had started my treatment in hours! that initial treatment lasted a few weeks, with regular monitoring and then immediately started on my long term treatment path within two weeks, still on weekly or biweekly checks and tests and appointments at the moment.

No the NHS isn't perfect by any means but it's pretty damned good, and in my personal experience, just fantastic!

jambalaya - Member
Negative headlines and stories sell more papers than positive ones.

I bet they'd sell some more papers if they put some puppies on page 3. Just look at these babies....

[img] [/img]

Back on topic.... the Tories know that the labour party constantly polls higher on the NHS than them. Rightfully too. Everyone knows the Tories just want to hand the lot over, as a private monopoly, to their mates, as another way to fleece us all, funnelling billions in taxpayers money into their front companies in Luxembourg, for ever poorer services. But once they've managed it, there will be no going back. The principle of the NHS will be over!

We've got an election coming up, so for their attack dogs at the Mail/Express/Times/Torygraph/Sun its now open season on the very principle of the 'failing' NHS! Which is probably tantamount to socialism/communism anyway

The good thing is that it doesn't seem to be working, as people generally aren't that stupid! So **** off Dave!!! We all still remember[i] 'There will be no top down reorganisation of the NHS. Honest!'[/i], and this crap....

[img] [/img]

the Daily Mail (I won't link to the story) is on about how the Welsh NHS is a failure and will be the model for what Ed Milliband will do in England.

Daily Mail = Tory supporter
General Election = Soon

No the NHS isn't perfect by any means but it's pretty damned good, and in my personal experience, just fantastic!

+1

Eh, surely the welsh NHS is nothing to do with Dave 😕

and as for reorganisation...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-21297850

I wish people would stop conflicting the Daily Mail with the conservative party.

I am pretty much conservative and wouldn't wipe my backside with the mail.

Not every tory reads the Mail
Everyone who reads the Mail is a ****! And we all know who they tend to vote for

I was in hospital for a broken back last year. The downsides were that some of the agency nursing staff were verging on incompetent and the after-care transport was a shambles.

Everything else, including the food (!), was to an excellent standard. Including, clearly, the actual operation and it's outcome.

I'd say (from my experience) that there are issues that need sorting that could be to do with funding and to some extent, better organisation.

The problem is, when financial resources are under extreme pressure, there are going to be holes that need to be filled. If the private sector is not involved in this, how are things to improve?

[i]The Tory party, and their friends in the right wing press, basically HATE the fact that 'their' taxes (which they sometimes even pay!) goes towards keeping poor people alive[/i]

This. A million times this.

Up until quite recently I managed 3 urgent care NHS dental sites. They are open 365 days a year and operate from 8 in the morning until 8 at night.

One of the more "fun" jobs was explaining to the private patients that would call on a weekend was no, they wouldn't get preferential treatment, or appts that would suit their teeing off time ( I wish I was joking, but I'm not) and that yes, all our dentists were from outside the UK but were suitably qualified, and that yes the brand new facility they found themselves in was open to all and sundry.

Some of them hated, and I use the word advisedly that "the poor" could get the same treatment at the same location by the same dentist for the same money as them.

The Tory party, and their friends in the right wing press, basically HATE the fact that 'their' taxes (which they sometimes even pay!) goes towards keeping poor people alive.

Well I'd say they hate their money being wasted in inefficient ways - well I do. NHS is good just not efficient.

I am pretty much conservative and wouldn't wipe my backside with the mail.

I wouldn't wipe my backside with a tory voter. My crap is too good for that.

The NHS certainly isn't perfect... but the HaSC Act is making the situation much worse, IMO. Services are being fragmented left, right & centre - and the hiving off of "profitable" services (e.g. routine elective surgery in the generally fit n' well) will do nothing for the kind of vulnerable patients who are most at risk from poor care. Meanwhile, all manner of interests are making hay - the sight of accountancy/consultancy groups "advising" indebted Hospital Trusts being particularly ironic... many of them "advised" on PFI, etc in the first place, FFS! Monitor & NHS England and all are now heavily staffed by much the same types - all intent on fudging in "competition", regardless of the gathering chaos on the ground. Overall, I'd say it's a 50/50 mix of deliberate [ideological] policy and utter fugging political ignorance - cast your mind back to when chumps like Simon Burns MP defended these reforms, despite heavy criticism from the frontline...

There [i]are[/i] problems in Wales (see, for example, [i]Private Eye[/i]) - but they reflect issues (overstretched wards, collapsing morale) that are also all-too-common in England - so it's pretty rich of the [i]Fail[/i]/Tories to use Wales as a political scorecard, given how much damage the incumbent lot have done to the NHS over 'ere. NuLab need to tread carefully, too - they introduced much of the pseudo-market managerialism that skewed clinical priorities, besides setting the whole privatisation train in motion.

Finally, given how disingenuous the media have been in their treatment of the NHS (and NHS staff), this recent [i]Times[/i] headline was pretty amusing... it's not as if they weren't warned about the likely consequences of Lansley's reforms! 😈

[img] :large[/img]

+1 to Binners, we've just had our 2nd child on the NHS (both home births) and had exemplary care on both occasions.

If my leg's hanging off I don't want to browse a few brochures to see which local provider has the best stats I want a bloody ambulance! Preferably staffed by staff who are motivated by making people better and not how much cash they can squeeze out of you.

But of course that doesn't make the people Tory donors play golf with any money so it must be changed!

Ed Milliband could strike a huge knockout blow on this but he's either in someone's pocket or as big a wet blanket as the media love to portray him as.

mudshark - Member

NHS is good just not efficient.

according to:

"the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation which is respected around the world for its analysis of the performance of different countries' health systems... ...The United Kingdom ranks first overall, scoring highest on quality, access and efficiency,"

ok, i'll admit that i found that on the Grauniad.

Oh and for those trying to make the point that getting the private sector involved will somehow make things 'more efficient' takes a look at our American cousins who in 2012 they spent 17.9% of GDP on private healthcare as opposed to our 9.4%.

Source:[url= http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS ] World Bank report[/url]

So is the NHS 'efficient' maybe not, but it's a damn sight more efficient than what's being brought in by stealth and at least our system cares for everyone and nobody gets bankrupted for being ill.

The mainstay of Lansleys reforms was to open up the NHS to EU competition law, so that rapacious private healthcare firms could cherry pick the profitable services from the NHS, while leaving the unprofitable bits, the important difficult stuff, the stuff that costs money, time and skill, to the state to pick up the tab. Or mount legal action if they were prevented from doing this! FFS!

My mum spent her entire working life in the NHS, as a midwife, then a health visitor. Unlike me, my mums a caring, considerate, and thoughtful person, but if you get her onto the subject now, of what this shower of ****s are doing to dismantle the NHS, she can become apoplectic with rage! And she holds Nu Labour just as responsible for starting the whole process in the first place.

But what Lansley did was shameful! But typical! Representing the interests of his corporate paymasters, to the detriment of every taxpayer in this country. The NHS is now at the mercy of predatory corporations, whose only interest is profit. And thats what the Tories planned right from the off. Except they forgot to mention that in their last manifesto. Shame that, really. If I recall, they actually said the complete opposite. And they wonder why we despise them? And their poll ratings on the NHS are so abysmal

Yes the NHS could be more efficient in many ways no doubt.

But! Does anybody (who's not going to personally profit from it) believe that there are enough efficiency improvements to be had that all the problems can be righted and also enable a significant profit for shareholders too?

And can anybody please explain to me why it's seemly impossible for a Tory (and others) to believe a public body can improve and become in anyway efficient/cost effective? It seem to be endless said that:
Public = poor quality, inefficient and poor value for money
and
Private = Perfect efficiency and great service for all users of the service

I think we could all give example of where those "Rules" appear to be broken.

she can become apoplectic with rage

After years of service, I don't blame her. Good healthcare builds on the foundation of work that's gone before - the work [i]she[/i] did.

NHS Wales replied

Negative made up bullshit headlines and stories sell more papers than positive ones.

so, any chance of them suing the mail?

Thus generating a set of headlines of "NHS Spending Millions on Legal Departments to Stifle Criticism"?

chvck - Member

NHS Wales replied: http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/healthandsocialcare/2014/141020daily-mail/?lang=en&&&&&&

Amongst the services provided by the Welsh NHS are cancer treatment and [i]apocalyptic[/i] bitch slaps.

I look after someone in their late sixties who has many things wrong with and as such under consultants at 5 hospitals.
All of which have provided exemplary service.

In the last two years he has had to be taken to A&E by ambulance 4 times and then admitted.
The treatment he has received has been shocking and abusive in some cases.

He had one hip replacement and one hip revision with in a week of each other at stanmore hospital which was fantastic in every way.
Shortly after being sent home he developed stomach issues which caused him y be admitted to watford general.
I explained about his hip wound on the revision side had not healed yet and need to be kept clean.

Long story short the only time the checked or cleaned the wound in weeks was when I made an official complaint about how the wound was looking more and more infected and leeking, even then they were not interested telling me they were treating his stomach not hip.

As soon as he was released I took him to stanmore who could not beleive it and had to do a second revision costing the NHS another £13000. And risking my friends life under anaesthetic as we had to battle to get the hips done in the first place as his serious heart problems mad him high risk.

I have seen a male nurse deliberately pinch him out of spite and had to tell a lady to bring food in to feed her elderly husband every day as he had not eaten in days as his meals were put down and then cleaned away untouched as he could not feed himself.

You do not want to get old and infirm and at the mercy of the health service if you cannot or have no one to stand up for you.

My BIL is the CEO of a big NHS hospital in the south and a nicer, more decent and dedicated bloke you couldn't hope to meet. However I've seen the effect of the stress of the job on his personality and it's not doing him any long-term good, he told me that since the buck stops with him, most of his private time is spent in keeping up with facts and figures so that he can rebuff the attacks coming constantly from the media, the public and avaricious lawyers. At any one time the hospital is fighting around 20 cases in court, a good few of them from disgruntled staff trying for compo.

In my experience, which is pretty broad - there are people who knock the NHS and spread all the lies and bullshit about it, and then there's people who've actually had to use it who usual gush about how well they were treated.

Three points:

1. The NHS is now paying out more than £1Bn a year to settle negligence claims. Many of these claims reflect failures to undertake simple checks, follow the right process or listen to the patient. Even by its own conservative estimates, 6,000+ patients are dying in secondary care due to the poor clinical practice they experience.

2. The CQC has said that patient care is unsafe in more 80% of the hospitals they have inspected so far in England this year.

3. Despite the huge amounts of money spent on cancer care over the last decade, NHS outcomes remain poor when compared to other health systems that have spent less - it's not about spending more money it's about getting the system to enable appropriate referrals and treatment without the patient having to manage the process themselves.

Putting these together, there's a continuum of hit and miss care, poor communication and lack of compassion for patients. There's also an ostrich-like syndrome amongst [u]some [/u]NHS staff that the NHS is perfect, and anyone who has a poor experience or loses a relative in circumstances that could have been reasonably avoided is just out to vilify the whole service and / or just wants to privatise it.

If you've been in the position of seeing relatives getting consistently poor care and seeing staff spending no time at all with patients because they are so busy chatting / texting etc. you'd probably be equally frustrated - it's worth saying that many NHS staff also feel this way but feel unable to speak up and challenge the behaviour of their colleagues.

All he specialist care we have had you could not fault, but under general medicine from ambulance service to A&E staff to the wards has been, well it's like watching people spinning plates.

"The mainstay of Lansleys reforms was to open up the NHS to EU competition law, so that rapacious private healthcare firms could cherry pick the profitable services from the NHS, while leaving the unprofitable bits, the important difficult stuff, the stuff that costs money, time and skill, to the state to pick up the tab. Or mount legal action if they were prevented from doing this! FFS!"

This seems to conveniently overlook what the last government because most people really can't have failed to miss the following that all started under the last government:

1. The use of Private Sector treatment sectors
2. The change to Primary Care contracts to enable new entrants to enter the "market"
3. The privatisation of Primary Care at night
4. The agreement to follow EU procurement rules for tender and tender all contracts publically
3. The massive use of PFI that has saddled the NHS with c£150Bn of debt
4. The plans for acute trust reconfigurations were drawn up by Andy Burnham - as was the £20B Efficiency "cut" he now bangs on about

The "massive" privatisation in the current government still only reflects around 5% of NHS Opex - this is barely changed from the last government and includes the likes of Macmillan Cancer Care who are by default treated as "private" because the provision isn't done by the NHS.

Lots of people seem very happy to band about rabble rousing claims like "rapacious private healthcare firms can cherry pick the profitable services from the NHS" but where is the evidence for the level of activity actually being markedly higher now than 2009?

Rob. I'm not disputing any of what the Nu Labour lot did. They did indeed open the door to private provision, and the rolling disaster of PFI

But The Lansley reforms of laying the NHS open to competition law, now changes the rules of the game completely. It alters the fundamental structure of the NHS, by allowing private healthcare companies to demand access, as their right, to the NHS. And then demand recompense (from us) if they'r denied this.

At the very least, this means the NHS spending valuable resources fighting endless legal battles with these 'rapacious corporations, and their highly funded legal departments. Money that will have to come from frontline services

This process has barely even begun. But its started and is now irreversible. It will end up leading to the wholesale privatisation of the profitable bits of... the NHS, leaving the taxpayer saddled with the bits they're not interested in. You can level a lot of accusations at the previous government, but they didn't do anything as malevolent as that. Its a time bomb that will ultimately destroy the health service as we know it!

Burnham was on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday and basically said that the privatisation he presided over was good privatisation whereas any current privatisation is bad privatisation 😆

And he's got a valid point. Read what I've just posted above. What Lansley has done is massively, fundamentally different from anything that went before it, with huge implications

Would be very interesting to see the figures between %age NHS budget spent on privatised services versus %age spent on PFI

I know theres one NHS trust that recently claimed 16% of its budget was servicing one PFI deal 😯

Robdixon

there is no such thing as NHS primary care services in the UK. The GP service and out of hours has always been private sector. GPs are not employed by the NHS. They work for private businesses, usually owned by some or all of the GPs at the practice, that has a contract to provide services to the NHS.

I do find it ironic how the GP community are so anti privatisation and like to give the impression that they are part of the NHS when in fact they are no different to Bupa, Circle and all the other private health providers.

Privatisation meh,

The only certainty is that over time more aspects of health care will need to be funded and provided outside the public sector especially if the notion of free at the point of delivery is to be maintained in some format. The stealth accusation rhetoric is massively overdone. tell me one gov dept that doesn't have some private sector provision?

Binners, how does you political analysis fit with the fact that health is a protected sector under these nasty Tories?

(It doesn't matter which party is in power in the future, the numbers, demographics, economics (if not the politics) are clear.)

Binners, how does you political analysis fit with the fact that health is a protected sector under these nasty Tories?

By 'protected' I presume you mean 'hasn't been cut as much as everything else'?

'Protected' does sound better though. I'll give you that

How much has it been cut then?

The only certainty is that over time more aspects of health care will need to be funded and provided outside the public sector especially if the notion of free at the point of delivery is to be maintained in some format.

Are there any Tories here today?

[img] [/img]

Some sections of the Welsh NHS are truly amazing.
Other sections are bloody awful.

[url= http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-spending-has-been-cut-tories-forced-to-admit-8395976.html ]Well THM... they stopped claiming that they hadn't cut NHS funding in 2012.[/url] After their own figures proved that they had.

its not just the funding. Its what its being spent on. They've spaffed countless billions on a completely unnecessary, ideologically driven reorganisation that they explicitly promised they weren't going to do. Where do you think that moneys coming from?

My mam died just three weeks ago today. She was treated at Ysbyty Wrecsam Maelor and for some reason I couldn't find the work-shy evil nurses etc in Wales that the mail and the tories like to bang on about. They treated her in her dying days with respect (even getting whiskey put on her prescription for a nightcap!).

Oh, but of course, NHS Cymru isn't managed by the Tories. Therefore only bad press about it.

I thought when Cameron got in that perhaps the Tories weren't *that* bad. I was right. They're far [i]far[/i] worse.

[quote=ninfan said]Would be very interesting to see the figures between %age NHS budget spent on privatised services versus %age spent on PFI
I know theres one NHS trust that recently claimed 16% of its budget was servicing one PFI deal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-29636743

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/betsi-cadwaladr-ex-health-board-7381407

Mary Burrows got nearly 500k from NHS funding to be completely shit at her job.

Belief in the NHS has replaced orthodox religion in Wales (& on STW!)

Are there any Tories here today?

Probably, I also hope that there are realists who can look beyond party political BS. An 80 year old costs the NHS 7x a 39 years old. Do the maths and then start your own planning for old age. Ditto pensions. Alternatively heads can be stuck in the sand and fingers crossed.

At the start of the 2000s health spending represented around 25% of gov spending. Under the nasty NHS hating Tories this will be 33%.. The bas*****s.....!

But it's not a party thing, since 1992 health spending has had the largest real increases among all areas of gov expenditure

An 80 year old costs the NHS 7x a 39 years old.

Am I supposed to be surprised by this?

I do find it ironic how the GP community are so anti privatisation and like to give the impression that they are part of the NHS when in fact they are no different to Bupa, Circle and all the other private health providers.

Are you sure about this? Are their fees not set by the NHS?

An 80 year old costs the NHS 7x a 39 years old.
Am I supposed to be surprised by this?

Not at all. But you should be prepared. Same with your pension. Doesn't matter who is in power you can't buck these trends. Like a scout much better to be prepared.

I'll still working to I'm 80 if the Tories stay in power. 😀

[quote=Drac said]I'll still working to I'm 80 if the Tories stay in power.

Na, you'll have been privatised way before then.

blurty - Member
Belief in the NHS has replaced orthodox religion in Wales (& on STW!)

Not really. I'm kinda into both. 😀

Na, you'll have been privatised way before then.

Ah so retired with a huge gold plated private sector pension. Sweeeet!

Binners, you've still missed the point that Lansley didn't "lay the NHS open to competition law" - he simply enacted the requirements for open public tendering that are enshrined under EU competition laws.

Unless you are suggesting that Lansley should have made the case for leaving Europe, he had no choice but to enact competition and procurement rules - this is consistent with the previous government who signed up to them in the first place.

The Welsh do struggle with public spending because they get shafted on the distribution of tax revenues. Would like to see DM article comparing English NHS with SNP run Scottish NHS.

... as much as I hate to say it the NHS reform has been on a straight like trajectory since the early 1990s with the creation of NHS trusts and the splitting of commissioning and provision of healthcare. labour continued this, the and the coalition have followed that lead. Unless Labour have a fundamental change of heart then they believe that competition between providers is the way to drive efficiency and that private sector v public sector providers is part of that process. So much so simplistic neo-classical orthodoxy.

Although this is the model in social care and some elements of healthcare (usually community care, end of life care, etc) there is little chance with hospital based private provision, beyond some elective surgery.

The problem is that that the financial and political barriers to entry for any meaningful competition for the private sector into the secondary healthcare provision are so high that it isn't really worth the risk. I can't see a private provider building a £500m hospital with the hope of attracting business away from the NHS. The problem will come if smaller elective units in existing private hospitals cream off all enough of the NHS caseload to make existing NHS general hospitals uneconomic. The Government would still need to fund the full infrastructure of the exiting public provision though, making the system less efficient not more - IMO anyway.

TBH Government would be best served by ensuring that the NHS providers are kept fully occupied and properly managing the whole healthcare landscape including public health, community care and social care. There is plenty of evidence that prevention and early community intervention is better for patient and cheaper. Fragmenting the services and half arsed attempts to create a market that would always be broken make this almost impossible

And on whether NHS has been cut. Although increases in Govt spending may have just matched the GDP inflation measure there is a huge efficiency assumption built into NHS spending plans to cover both increased activity and the unavoidable fact that price inflation in the NHS is generally much higher than GDP inflation - albeit that freezing/holding down pay increases does reduce the gap.

You need to decide whether the funding provided is sufficient for what we want the NNS to do - the fact it does or does not reflect a real terms increase is irrelevant - political posturing

robdixon - Member

Binners, you've still missed the point that Lansley didn't "lay the NHS open to competition law" - he simply enacted the requirements for open public tendering that are enshrined under EU competition laws.

I'm no expert but this doesn't seem to be the case- as a social function rather than an economic one, the NHS isn't explicitly bound by EU competitive rules. It's only once it starts actively promoting competition between profitmaking service providers that it becomes an economic activity.

So basically, come in through the door marked wossnames, get treated as a wossname. But since it's the competition itself that brings the NHS under competition rules, removing the competition seems to be allowed

Northwind - if you think that's [i]not [/i]the case you should probably be asking the likes of Andy Burnham and Alan Johnson why they oversaw literally hundreds of procurements that use the associated frameworks and rules... For all of the talk of a "change" under Andrew Lansley there are very few (if any) examples of what the change supposedly is - all of the practices that are used by critics to illustrate it are ones you can find under the last government.

What's effectively going on is that Labour are busy hoodwinking the public by remaining silent on what they really did during their previous time in office, their sudden damascene conversion to principles that run at odds with their most recent policies, and finally, alluding to new policies without giving us any detail on how they will work, who will pay for them OR explaining why they have done a 180 degree turn.

This will probably work quite well though as it's impossible to have any kind of rational discussion of healthcare in the UK and despite the public wanting the best healthcare, they will only vote for it if they are certain someone else will pay the incremental cost.

... I think that what is changing is the increased use of the private sector for direct clinical delivery of healthcare as opposed to infrastructure or support services.

If Labour want to draw a division between them and the Tories then perhaps that is where they need to look. Maybe I should actually read their policy if they have published it yet.

robdixon - Member

Northwind - if you think that's not the case you should probably be asking the likes of Andy Burnham and Alan Johnson why they oversaw literally hundreds of procurements that use the associated frameworks and rules...

Not really sure where you're going with this... It's not about this lot vs the last lot. While trying to out-Tory the Tories, New Labour chose to drive the NHS in this direction; that doesn't tell you anything about EU competition law.

The response to criticism often seems to be "but the last lot did it too!" My response to that is, why does that matter? It's a bad idea regardless of who's driving it.

Just spotted this on that there Twitter. Seemed relevant (though I've not read the thread so apologies if not).

[img] [/img]

http://pic.twitter.com/gUIlpJxQNB

Grammar police!!!!

Is that letter a case of English as a foreign language? 😉

The alliteration does add a poetic touch though!

Walk around any hospital grounds and you will usually see dedicated spaces for certain depts staff, as opposed to communal parking, nice sets of offices and treatment areas all branded as belonging to that area, health centres incorporating a pharmacy, physio and minor injuries drop in.

All done to fragmentise the nhs and sell it off as small pre formed groups.

Then look inside the building, facilities management, catering, security,cleaning, hospitality services,patient records,patient transport and lots more all run by outside companies, other bits can also and will probably be split off if this lot by any chance get back in, x ray and scannning, physio, OT,chiropody, maternity, and many more.

And lets not forget everyday as we age, we get closer to the day we may and will need the extended care of a joined up NHS..

Now here is a good daily mail headline, DRUNKS TO BE CHARGED FOR AMBULANCE ATTENDANCES, JUST LIKE YOUD BE CHARGED FOR A TAXI.

If youre drunk and paid for drink, surely a charge to transport you hospital should be charged, to many pissheads blocking up the nhs, and taking valuable ambo time up.

Would I have to pass a breathalyser or pay the money.
And if I refuse to pay would I be left in the street.

Man left to die in street after refusing to pay ambulance fare.
That would be a headline.

Like a parking fine you would be billed and failure to pay will result in a bailiffs visit,wether breathalyser or blood test i dont really care, just dont want drunks blocking ambos.

If youre involved in an rtc, youre usually billed by the health authority, i was last accident i had, and i walked into a and e, not arriving by ambo

Man left to die in street as he hadn't paid his last ambulance fare.

Ambulances are there to help people who need them irrespective of how they came to need them.
If you started charging people for what ever reason it's a slippery slope.

If there are not enough ambulances to go around then we need more.
If we have a social problem with peoples attitude towards drink, let's tackle that.

But to charge people because they were drunk is ridicules.

The number of alcohol-related admissions to hospital in Northern Ireland annually rose by 61 per cent between 2000 and 2010 to 11,453. In England, admissions related to alcohol more than doubled between 2002 to 2012, to 1,220,300 admissions per year, and similar increases were seen in Wales. In Scotland admissions have been declining since 2008 – partly driven by improved support outside of hospital for people with alcohol problems.

Ambulances need staff, people attending a and e require staff, other treatment and transport services are available, this government have cut staff and funding.

If you cann afford to derink to excess you can afford to pay for transport to hospital or a place of treatment.

"Walk around any hospital grounds and you will usually see dedicated spaces for certain depts staff, as opposed to communal parking, nice sets of offices and treatment areas all branded as belonging to that area, health centres incorporating a pharmacy, physio and minor injuries drop in."

I'd hazard a guess you'd been walking round the same areas for the last 40 years you'd see the same thing irrespective of what party is in power.

This is actually the symptom of a different problem which is that the NHS operates as a loose consortium of feifdoms - all being run for the convenience of the staff who work in them but with different rules... with the poor patient typically bouncing round between them because none of the departments talk to each other - perfectly illustrated by the need for endless repeat visits (and time off work) for a series of routine diagnostics that can and should be done on the same visit and centrally coordinated. This is seen as a vision of Utopia in the NHS but something the rest of Europe has managed for at least the last 15 years.

If youre involved in an rtc, youre usually billed by the health authority, i was last accident i had, and i walked into a and e, not arriving by ambo

That'll be because it's the hospital trust who'll charge you.

If you cann afford to derink to excess you can afford to pay for transport to hospital or a place of treatment.

+1 and it's completely out of order to expect NHS staff to have to work in battle-zone like conditions every Friday and Saturday night, not to mention the distress it causes to other patients who have genuine urgent care needs but have to wait for hours in a room with people shouting vomiting and fighting around them

If your figures are correct project, the government need to ask why and try to work to reverse them.
It used to be an offence to have a drunk person in your pub.
That was only ever enforced if a pub had a problem with trouble.
But it encouraged the publicans to be responsible with how they served there drinks.

If the government has a problem with the amount of drunk people spilling out onto our streets every weekend.
That is a problem they need to take up with the establishments who are serving them and making a prophet from these people barely able to stand up straight that are causing a strain on our health resources.

I'm a nurse and I started my career in the NHS. Sadly we were sold out, and I know work for a private company, won't mention who but they also do holidays, flights, trains, money, TV to name but few. Is it better? No. Why because it's all about how quick can we get people in and out, and how many people are we seeing because we have to meet our targets or otherwise there will be commissioning issues. I have yet to meet a nurse who thinks privatisation is good. We are being conned. In ten years we will have an American health care system, absolutely shocking.

I'm a nurse and I started my career in the NHS. Sadly we were sold out, and I know work for a private company, won't mention who but they also do holidays, flights, trains, money, TV to name but few. Is it better? No.

So youre no VIRGIN then to the NHS,