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I wonder how much of the funding increases from 1997 onwards only served to mitigate some of the damage done in the previous decade? As mentioned earlier in this thread, healthcare suffers from the law of diminishing returns: you spend more and more money eliciting narrower treatment outcomes from the illest of patients who you would have just lost 20 years ago. Bit like spending £500 to lose a couple of pounds from your 22lb hardtail.
Also they forgot to start the vertical axis at 0: this graph looks to the casual observer like despite huge increases in funding, productivity has dropped by half in 11 years.
Bit harsh, that.
We are really seeing the perfect exposition of the politics of envy here! After all the traditional ill considered insult offered towards lefties, now we see [b]who is most productive at crying when they don't get what they want[/b] . Perhaps they should get a new job, in crying. They are best at it after all. 😆
eh? I'm not quite sure who you say is crying there BBF.
eh? I'm not quite sure who you say is crying there BBF.
Well go back and read all the posts crying tears of pure envy over the public sector not suffering duly for the private sector's mistakes.
Fun Facts about the Tax Payers Alliance:
1. Director Alexander Heath Lives in the Loire, and hasn't paid British Tax in years.
2. Funded by donors such as David Alberto, Malcolm MacAlpine and Anthony Bamford, major tory party donors who all have a vested interest in the dismantling of public services.
3. They claim they are not a Conservative Party front organisation on the basis the Lord Ashcroft isn't a donor.
4. Their fundamental strategy is to destroy public confidence in public services, paving the way for cuts. According to the Fabian Society (an admittedly left leaning think tank) which has investigated it.
Not exactly the most impartial of sources 😉
Well go back and read all the posts crying tears of pure envy over the public sector not suffering duly for the private sector's mistakes.
Glad someone else also thinks they are not our (I say our as in the public sector I work in) mistakes.
Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder if the Taxpayers Alliance is full of people with very creative acccountants who really should be paying more tax?
The Tax Payers Alliance follows in a very old traditional Conservative Party strategy of attempting to sound more plausible to sceptical Labour/Liberal voters.
During most of the last century when local council revenue was raised through [i]local rates[/i], the Conservative Party would often stand candidates in local council elections under the name of "the ratepayers candidate".
Whilst these candidates were nominally "independents", as councillors they invariably voted with the Conservative Party. They usually stood in Labour or Liberal wards where standing as an "official" Conservative Party candidate would otherwise be a disadvantage, ie wards which the Conservative Party stood no chance and wouldn't normally bother standing.
It's a strategy that worked well in a neighbouring council to me, Sutton, during the 1970s. There the "Ratepayers" were able to capture seats which might otherwise have gone to the Liberal Party. In the solid Tory seats official Conservative candidates were elected.
Yep, the Tax Payers Alliance follows in this tradition of misleading the gullible.
"They're fascists, they're neo-conservatives" - funny how the PS supporters concentrate on spinning and smearing anyone who dares to criticise the goose that's laying their golden eggs, rather than dealing with the reality - but then our government is not above similar tactics so no surprise.
In the new Euro Health Consumer Index 2009 (PDF), the UK comes a middling 14th despite having a relatively high income. All of the countries that score below us are significantly poorer. The best performing country is the Netherlands, which has become the first country to top the list for two years in a row.The reasons for that Dutch success given (via ConHome) by the authors of the report are revealing:
"The research director, Dr Arne Bjornberg, said, "As the Netherlands is expanding its lead among the best performing countries, the index indicates that the Dutch might have found a successful approach."
She said the secret of its success is that is "combines competition for funding and provision within a regulated framework".
"There are information tools to support active choice among consumers. The Netherlands have started working on patient empowerment early, which now clearly pays off in many areas. And politicians and bureaucrats are comparatively far removed from operative decisions on delivery of Dutch healthcare services."
When we wrote Wasting Lives: A statistical analysis of NHS performance in a European context since 1981 (PDF), we set out the following priorities for reforming British healthcare:
"In order for British healthcare to match the performance seen in other European countries several key differences will need to be addressed:
Centralisation. Local NHS organisations have very little room for independent decision making. In other European countries, in particular Switzerland and Spain, healthcare policy is highly decentralised.
Political management. Healthcare provision in the UK is managed by politicians. Secretaries of State responsible for healthcare have rarely had management experience and none have had specific subject knowledge in healthcare. European healthcare systems, in Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, have genuinely independent providers of hospital care and social health insurance that are not managed by politicians.
Monopolistic. The NHS is a monopoly. It not only has unique access to taxpayers’ money but does not allow patients to receive part of their treatment for a certain condition for free while purchasing the rest from the private sector. In the Netherlands, in particular, insurance companies compete to offer the best value. In almost all of the European healthcare systems a diversity of hospitals competes to offer value to insurance funds."
Our recommendations for reform of the NHS are pretty strikingly similar to the reasons given by Dr. Bjornberg for the Dutch healthcare system's success. That isn't some astonishing feat of prescience on our part. It's just that the basic principles that lead to good healthcare aren't that complicated. Unfortunately, our politicians are more interested in a competition to see who can spend more of our money than trying to make sure that money is well spent. Anyone who was really serious about investing in Britain's healthcare, rather than posing at the public's expense, would be interested in creating the kind of NHS that can really deliver value for money and compete with the best in the world, our European peers."[i]
SirJonLordofBike1 - MemberThey're fascists, they're neo-conservatives"
Taxpaers alliance are unfortunatly - you only have to look at who funds them to see this.
In the new Euro Health Consumer Index 2009 (PDF), the UK comes a middling 14th despite
There is a simple reason for that - we don't spend enough. The netherlands that you compare to is not free at the point of use - It cost my sister £3000 to have each of her children and £500 when her son broke his arm.
We pay less as a % of gdp on healthcare than virtually any other country in Europe and aa fair bit less than the Netherlands.
The netherlands admin cost is higher as well as a result of the multiple competing funding streams
[img] 
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Sure they forgot to allow for that, and so the NHS is really efficient afterall - they're great 😆
Absolute spend per head rather than %of Gdp is probably more informative (UK GDp v's Dutch ???!)but really its results and the delivery of services not just £'s spending thats the true measure of success - a concept that many seem to struggle with. Admin cost is just a fairly arbitary categorisation of total cost, its likely that being properly organised will cost more than not, but done properly that the overall total cost should be lower.
Actually I think you and the dinasaurs within the PS should examine their concience.
There is an increasing appetite even within the PS for modernisation, however the elements within the public sector who continue to refuse to accept what is patently the case and engage in modernisation are at best misguided at worst selfish hypochrits who are driven by the self interests of fear and greed - not the altrusim that they so piously profess.
The real price of their reluctance to co-operate, their eagerness to obstruct through any means and to metaphorically "put a gun to the head" of the British public is costing the suffering and lives of the people they profess to care so deeply for ( well so long as it doesn't affect their pension, their income, working practices, or mean they could in anyway be judged for not delivering value).
A statistical analysis of World Health Organisation data reveals that the poor performance of the NHS is causing 17,157 deaths per year
£34 billion of extra spending under Brown has made no difference to UK mortality
Using data from the World Health Organisation and statistical techniques pioneered in the British Medical Journal, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has produced a major report on NHS performance since the 1980s.Wasting Lives: A statistical analysis of NHS performance in a European context since 1981, analyses data from the WHO to estimate the number of deaths that could plausibly have been averted by the NHS since the 1980s. The measure used is known as “mortality amenable to healthcare”. The calculations compare the UK performance to that of Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain.
If the UK were to achieve the same level of “mortality amenable to healthcare” as the average of the other European countries studied, there would have been 17,157 fewer deaths in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available.
This is equivalent to over five times the total number of deaths in road accidents and over two and a half times the number of deaths related to alcohol in 2004.
Steady improvements in mortality rates, relative to European peers, have been made at almost exactly the same rate throughout the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments despite huge increases in spending from 1999 to date. There can no longer be any doubt that the Government’s extra NHS spending has completely failed to deliver results.
If NHS spending had continued to increase relative to European peers at its pre-1999 rate £34.3 billion – £1,350 per household – less would have been spent between 1999 and 2004. In 2004 alone, £9.8 billion less would have been spent, 9.7 per cent of total spending in that year. This extra money has largely been wasted.
Matthew Sinclair, author of the report and a Policy Analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:“Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries. Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality. This is a colossal waste of lives and money. We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation.”
Professor Karol Sikora, Medical Director of CancerPartnersUK, steering group member of Doctors for Reform and author of the foreword to the report, said:
“The NHS should not be a religion, with its structure set in tablets of stone. We face a choice between a modern, consumer driven service for all or a decaying, bureaucratic system which only those with their own resources manage to escape. Politicians need to read this report carefully and determine the optimal strategy they can put to a well informed public. Those that capture the best way forward will carry the British voter with them.”
OK you've sold it top me SirJon, we should begin to scrap the NHS as of the new Parliament, reduce taxation in line with the lowered expenditure and let healthcare be provided by private means.
[i]That's not the genius bit. This is the genius bit.
Instead of the poor people being annoyed with you and the rich people, YOU GET THEM ANNOYED WITH EACH OTHER!! You play off the public sector against the private, and everyone moans about how everyone else has it easy. [/i]
Didn't anybody read this, earlier?
Incidentally, in my bit of a NHS Trust strategic senior management have tried 2 major reorganisations of our directorate - both failed miserably and cost over £1m. They're now having a third go and have decided to bring senior staff from the operational side of things on board to do it 'properly'! 😯 🙄
All this chat about public vs private sector pay scales... if only there were some official statistics on the matter. Oh wait, there are
[url= http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285 ]
[/url]The full-time occupations with the highest earnings in 2008 were ‘Health professionals', (median pay of full-time employees of £977 a week), followed by ‘Corporate managers’ (£727) and ‘Science and technology professionals’ (£691). The lowest paid of all full-time employees were those in ‘Sales occupations’, at £272 a week.The percentage difference between the median level of full-time earnings in the public sector (£523 per week in April 2008) and the private sector (£460 per week) narrowed over the year to April 2008, following annual increases of 4.3 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively.
Lord Greenville,
I think everyone, like us, who work within the NHS sees these ridiculous quantities of money wasted.
Personally many of the failings in patient care and elevated costs are due to the fundamental differences in public and private sector operations and mindsets.
I think the NHS has to be one or the other.
As an example I worked with a lady recently who had spent 11 weeks longer than necessary in hospital (cost to NHS probably £250 per day) because 2 different teams were batting her referral between them over who would eventually pick up her, admittedly, expensive package of care.
The reason for this is that each department tries to act like a private sector business and protect/maximise its own budget.
We see waste in this case as staff time and expertise is used to do assessments showing that the other 'business' should be footing the bill, yet the money comes out of the public purse whoever finally picks it up.
We see poor patient care due to longer than necessary hospital care, the increased chance of hospital acquired infection and the knock on effect of bed blocking to other patients further down the system.
No one benefits and thousands of ££££££££ wasted.
druidh,
I suspect that the term 'Health Professional' refers to doctors and not Health Care Assistants and Nurses, as there are very few Nurses I have met who are earning in excess of £50K per annum.
But you already knew that, didn't you.
Average UK earnings are £24K approximately, which means that most of the employees you will meet withing a Hospital below the level of Ward Sister will be earning less than the National Average, and significantly less than the £50,000 per annum average that you linked to.
Now I wouldn't mind if Nurses were on an average of £50K but there you go...
Either that or the Missus has been lying to me and has a secret retirement fund stashed away 😆
druidh, not sure that those figures are entirely relevant. In the first paragraph, are health professionals purely those working in the public sector? It's also dependant on how you group an occupation. Stockbroker? Company director? I guess in any case, I want the people looking after me in a life/death situation to be the most highly paid on earth!
The second paragraph is also interesting, but what you'd really want is a comparison of similar jobs between public and private sector employees. Maybe the answer is to care a bit less about other peoples circumstances and concentrate more on my own?
Getting back to the OP, I still agree with him - perfectly within his rights to complain. The difference I see being the private sector actually IS slightly independant of the recession. There are still companies doing well and awarding pay rises and bonuses. Ergo, perform well and you will be rewarded. Public sector? Perform well, who cares? Freezes only for you matey.
Let's face it the top and bottom of the matter is that some people are crap and others are saints - no system can reward each group accordingly and so some people don't get what they deserve.
Simplest solution is to just ignore it and go ride your bike.
I think all of you exponents of the "google then cut and paste" school of internet arguing need to remember that nobody reads those lengthy tracts of shite except the poster (and maybe not even him/her). Your "opponent" doesn't read them, and disinterested spectators don't read them either.
Just thought I'd mention it.
johnners - Member
I think all of you exponents of the "google then cut and paste" school of internet arguing need to remember that nobody reads those lengthy tracts of shite except the poster (and maybe not even him/her). Your "opponent" doesn't read them, and disinterested spectators don't read them either.Just thought I'd mention it.
❓ Erm ok thanks for that helpful and eloquently put point, you should speak for yourself.
Never mind that the quote may well be pertinent to the matter in discussion, If you cant be bothered to read what you considor to be "lengthy tracts of shite" that's your choice,I'm really not interested, I'm not sure anyone is really, if they were perhaps they could draw pictures or summarise in mono-syllabic words for you. No offence intended.
Let's face it the top and bottom of the matter is that some people are crap and others are saints - no system can reward each group accordingly and so some people don't get what they deserve.Simplest solution is to just ignore it and go ride your bike.
Lol Amen to that! I'm off. 😀
The Taxpayers' Alliance? Give me a break. Their [i]faux[/i]-Wat Tyler peasants' revolt schtick is actually insulting, given who bankrolls 'em. 🙄
I've encountered my share of waste and incompetence in the NHS. NuLAb took a good-value, if under-funded service, and threw money at Bliar's "modernising", top-down visions, instead of the local coalface.
But I've also seen many, many examples of outstanding (and - yes - [i]efficient[/i]) care, delivered under great pressure, 24/7. It's not something I want to dispense with (and I speak as a patient, not as a ward grunt). There is much that healthcare systems across the developed world could learn from each other - but that still doesn't support the TPA's marketised vision. That's not how they organise acute care on the continent, whatever the easy talk of choice and competition by desk jockey policy wonks. But then they have their own agenda: the likes of [url= http://www.karolsikora.com/ ]Karol Sikora[/url], [url= http://www.cinven.com/ ]Cinven[/url], [url= http://www.uhc.com/ ]United[/url] et al are positioning themselves nicely for what they hope will be the fragmentation of the NHS. I'll make a prediction: when it comes to a reasonable degree of [i]comprehensive[/i] care (esp in terms of acute stuff, ITU, A+E etc), it won't be the ****ing "market" that picks up the slack - it will be major teaching hospitals and charity. Privatisation won't solve MRSA, C.Diff, or the challenges of looking after an ever-older demographic, whatever the TPA think.
edit: oh, and great post, PhilO. 😀
Taxpayer alliance? Doctors for reform? Both marginal organisations a of known utter right wing nutterness.
Posts from SirJonLordofBike1 quoting them? Mendacious at best. Nothing to back up these wild allegations from people idealogically opposed to a state monopoly.
If you believe either group you are sip0ly stupid - both groups wish to see the end of univbersal provision of healthcare.
SirJonLordofBike1
Absolute spend per head rather than %of Gdp is probably more informative (UK GDp v's Dutch ???!)
Netherlands GDP is higher than UK - therefore total spend per person is significantly higher - thats why their outcomes are better.
Maybe the Public servants could donate their pay increases to a charity for inner city schools? That would be sooo nice 🙂
Sorry chaps, I seem to have caused a row!
If George (we're all in this together, yah?) Osborne had suggested a nationwide tax on everyone to help 'us' all out of this mess, I would be the first to agree.
As it is, he has effectively suggested a tax on only those of us who work in the public sector.
Then again, he is a Tory and they can't be seen to be raising taxes, so he's just not going to pay the money to me in the first place.....
As for my pension, I earn it. I earn it by working internal rotation for 20 years; that's nights and days. I earn it by getting one weekend in 4 off for 20 years. I earn it by being at work on Christmas day, 15 out of the last 20 years. I earn it by dealing with people who think it's a good thing to hit me. I earn it by dealing with those who are HIV positive. I earn it by dealing with those with active TB. I'm doing a lot of earning it at the moment by dealing with those with swine flu. I earn it by sitting holding the hands of people who are dying who have no relatives.
I earn it by being good at my job.
crikey - MemberSorry chaps, I seem to have caused a row!
If George (we're all in this together, yah?) Osborne had suggested a nationwide tax on everyone to help 'us' all out of this mess, I would be the first to agree.
As it is, he has effectively suggested a tax on only those of us who work in the public sector.
No - he's suggesting that it shouldn't [i]only[/i] be private sector workers feeling the pain.
[i]No - he's suggesting that it shouldn't only be private sector workers feeling the pain.[/i]
I see no suggestion of any [b]'national'[/b] pain.
He is not 'suggesting' that to public sector workers, he's [b]taxing[/b] us because he can.
If 'we're all in this together' then lets all donate our pay rises, otherwise it's a stealth [b]tax[/b] on the public sector.
Not all private sector workers ARE feeling the pain though druidh. And yet ALL public sector workers will.
I thought his plan was only to freeze the pay of those earning over £18k, not ALL public sector workers?
Its all about cheap political point scoring to appease murdoch press reading classes. The Murdoch papers have been running a campaign for ages about the "bloated public sector" and " gold plated public sector pensions funded by the taxpayer"
Cameron knows that few public sector workers vote tory so does not care about peeing them off. This initiative gives him the opportunity to appease Murdoch and to attack the standard tory bogeyman.
The hypocrisy and chutzpah of the man is incredible - "the NHS is safe with us" So his first move will be to alienate and demoralise the workforce. Very clever.
Have you been drinking again?
Who me? You the one on the windup
Chaps - I should let you into Druidhs dirty little secret.
Edited out from a sense of fairness
[i]I thought his plan was only to freeze the pay of those earning over £18k, not ALL public sector workers? [/i]
Right.... and all those private sector workers earning over £18k? They get to contribute exactly what to the recovery of the country?
Let me say it again, for all those hard of thinking; I don't mind a pay freeze if we [b]all[/b] have one, but to choose one sector, those, as noted who probably wouldn't vote Tory, is taking the piss.
George (heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor, County Tipperary, Ireland, who in 2009 received strong criticism for the way he had handled his expenses, after he was found to have 'flipped' his second home, changing which property he designated as his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems estimated he owed £55,000 to the public purse as a result of this. He had previously paid back £1,193 on overpayments on his mortgage and chauffeur fares and was ridiculed when it emerged that he had claimed £47 for two copies of a DVD of his own speech on "value for taxpayers' money" Osborne is currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over mortgage payments from 2003, and second home designation between 2001-2003. Also a member of the Bullingdon Club, that was 'infamous for "trashing" restaurants and other riotous behaviour' and 'is open only to sons of aristocratic families and the super-rich') Osborne suggesting a pay freeze for public sector workers is somewhat indicative of him being a fool.
I don't have any "dirty little secrets" TJ.
OK TJ and all the other lefties on here lets front up. How much tax would you be happy to pay to keep public spending at its current level, give all the public sector a cost of living increase and still pay off the budget deficit? Better still how much would you be prepared to pay (if as you seem to think money is all that's required) to get our health, education, transport, defence, social services and justice systems fit for purpose?
Surely the question is "how many public sector jobs are you willing to sacrifice in order to ensure a pay rise for those that remain?"
up on the downs -
My view - 50% over £100 000, 75% over £250 000 Raise thresholds above the rate of inflation. Include bonuses in taxable income, tax inheritence higher
Cancel trident, cancel the aircraft carriers, troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. That should go some way to sorting the mess out and would raise an awful lot more money than the tory proposals.
Druidh - how much taxpayers money in your pension pot that you got 15 yrs early fro mt the bank as it was bailed out by the taxpayer?
I don't really care about the pay rise as such what does annoy me is the continual harping on by folk who do not know about " gold plated pensions" and "bloated public sector" neither of which stand up to independent scrutiny
If asking inane questions is the order of the day, how much would you pay me to look after you or your significant other on Intensive Care for a day, or a week, or a month?
Let's put a price on it, because the 'old price of everything, value of nothing' society seems to be in the ascendant....
I am in favour of [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax ]tobin tax[/url] as well - along with carbon taxation.
How much is it worth for me to look after your demented elderly parents with kindness love and skill? Or would you rather they were drugged into immobility and warehoused?
Come on TJ what % for those less than £100,000? I'm guessing that includes you and me and most other people on here. There aren't enough rich around to soak for the revenue you'd need.
My vote is for 25% flat rate on any income and close every last loophole. Simplifying the tax system like this makes it cheaper to get the tax collected and removes tax avoidance. Also raise thresholds enough to take the low paid out of the tax system completely thus making it pay to go to work.
If asking inane questions is the order of the day,
What's inane about it Crikey? Come on how much tax would you be willing to pay for world class public services?
[i]removes tax avoidance[/i]
Funny how no government has really grasped this particular nettle, no?
Easier to tax the muppets.....
How much is it worth for me to look after your demented elderly parents with kindness love and skill? Or would you rather they were drugged into immobility and warehoused?
Bit to late for that mate they're both dead and yes my Dad was demented at the end and I didn't see much kindness love and skill in the care professions in the process.
up on the downs - flat rate taxation of 25 % would mean massive cuts in public spending. I like the principle of progressive taxation.
I would happily pay 10% more tax if it was needed - but it isn't - what is needed is stopping waste - such as trident and the two new aircraft carriers and stopping the rich from tax avoidance.
We are still a low tax economy - lower than most of the rest of Europe
More than I pay at present, but only if [b]everyone[/b] pays it.
ie, no offshore cobblers, no tax exiles, no secret accountant island bullshit.