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News flash the private sector is already propping up the NHS as many people are forced to pay for treatment due to the state of the NHS.
And based upon my OH's recent experiences the waiting times for private sector ops are now equivalent to what NHS ones were a decade or so ago - no more "see you in a day or two".
But I'm blaming those who've created this mess, not those putting forwards ideas/strategies to try and fix it.
The Guardian view on Labour’s economic plans: a response too small for the challenge the UK faces
Although this was Wednesday's Guardian editorial I have only just read it. It hits a lot of nails on the head (I'm not often much of a fan of comment pieces in the Guardian) so I thought it was worth linking. Especially as the Guardian has a long established history of being something of a moderate/centrist bible.
I particularly liked the last couple sentences of the editorial bearing in mind my claim a couple of days ago on this thread that the 1970s are used by Tories and Labour right-wingers to justify neoliberal policies, and that every decade since then has seen economic crisis.
The 1970s are a political device that can be used to frighten voters into accepting the neoliberal logic of “there is no alternative”. But a better balance between capitalism and democracy will need alternatives – and Ms Reeves ought to offer them.
The private sector robs the NHS of labour and resources available to those that can’t afford to pay.
Your occasional reminder that nearly every high street dentist, GP surgery, Optician who provides NHS care is in fact a privately owned 'for profit' business.
Actual Private healthcare i.e.; paid for services that isn't provided by the NHS, is a teeny sector.
News flash the private sector is already propping up the NHS as many people are forced to pay for treatment due to the state of the NHS.
It's taken away resources from the rest of us.
Same with private schools - they take labour that was available available to the state and allocate it to those with wealth.
The private sector props nothing up.
It's a drain when it comes to essential services.
Your occasional reminder that nearly every high street dentist, GP surgery, Optician who provides NHS care is in fact a privately owned ‘for profit’ business.
Yeah and it shouldn't be that way should it!
Look at the state of dentists!
You've answered your own question.
Actual Private healthcare i.e.; paid for services that isn’t provided by the NHS, is a teeny sector
Taking labour and resources from a limited pool for those who can't pay.
Although this was Wednesday’s Guardian editorial I have only just read it. It hits a lot of nails on the head (I’m not often much of a fan of comment pieces in the Guardian) so I thought it was worth linking. Especially as the Guardian has a long established history of being something of a moderate/centrist bible.
It's funny how Centrists came to the defence of Reeves - finding optimism and solutions buried deep in her speech.
Reality check: there is no detail in her speech that I can see that is even remotely aligned to progressive macro-economics.
The private sector props nothing up.
It’s a drain when it comes to essential services.
It's more nuanced than that. For example, I was able to take advantage of private healthcare to deal with a recent health issue, which managed to get appointments with two specialists and multiple scans within the space of a month.
On the NHS I'd have been waiting for a year or more, and would have lost my job, and at that point I'd still need the NHS to cover the cost of the diagnosis and treatment.
Not sure what the cost to the NHS is of, say, an MRI scan, but I remember thinking that it was actually quite good value for money when I saw the invoice after spending more than an hour in the thing.
Yeah and it shouldn’t be that way should it!
It works quite well as long as you fund it properly, and that's how the NHS has always worked.
Taking labour and resources from a limited pool for those who can’t pay.
Yes I don't disagree, but that part of the labour and resource pool is a teeny incidental part of the issue, not the major one. There are many many things to sort out before you get to the issue of the private care sector worker pool that only works in the private sector that is preventing the public sector getting to your granny's hip replacement.
Yeah but those specialists will have NHS jobs too. They take the private work to boost their salaries by another £100k or so. It does take from the NHS and increase inefficiency and unfairness.
But the idea you just dump money into a hugely complex health and care system that's been starved for years and with one bound you're free... It's so far beyond naive I struggle with where to start. How long would it take you to create a new post - sort the job description, place in the organisation, where they're going to sit, IT etc etc. And then recruit someone, do the pre employment checks etc etc, and then get them up to speed. And that's for one of the new HR people you'd need to start doing the deals to bring in all these new frontline staff, who'd clearly need the same.
Alternatively nah, just herd a crowd of docs in Delhi onto a ferry or something? Be reet...
Point is we simply don't need private healthcare. Don't need to go much further than that.
The term 'it's not pragmatic' is often thrust towards leftist solutions - but in this case it's entirely pragmatic if you want a healthy mobile population - to not have a private sector gaining traction!
It will just make things worse.
Factually - when you take limited resources available to the country and allocate them to a small section of society with wealth - then you've simply excluded the rest of us who haven't got the capital to pay for it.
It's just another example of the market working for a few. It's ludicrous and not pragmatic, and only appears to work because the people believe the government has limited funds to pay for healthcare.
Total fraudulent house of cards.
The point is even if you get all the private sector staff to return to the NHS is does sweet FA to increase treatment capacity in the UK, the pot still has the same number of doctors and nurses in it. Also if they all return to the NHS the NHS picks up their costs and all the other costs associated with the private care. The fact the current pot is unfairly distributed isn't right, but it's a separate issue.
The amount of naivety being displayed this morning is really underming a lot of the usual left wing arguments that if we throw a shit tonne of money at something it'll be alright. Underfunding is a problem but it's not the only one and probably not the biggest single issue. A bigger issue for the NHS is bed blocking and lack of social care. Whilst funding for social care is a major issue (people used to look after their own relatives in old age now expect the state to pick up the cost whilst pocketing their inheritance) we just don't have the number of people willing to go into the care sector available in this country. Increasing wages would undoubtedly help but being in caring role requires a specific skillset and attitude, one most people don't have.
Where are these professionally trained and experienced practitioners coming from, we left the EU remember
Ah yes the new centrist mantra. Nothing can be fixed unless we rejoin the EU, and everything that's wrong is because we left!
Things were going south long before Cameron started having nightmares about Farage. And you know, we still have the power to unilaterally allow EU workers to come here, so the argument doesn't stack up.
Also if they all return to the NHS the NHS picks up their costs and all the other costs associated with the private care. The fact the current pot is unfairly distributed isn’t right, but it’s a separate issue
There is no issue at all with the NHS paying for anything that is available - providing the government agrees.
And secondly you've not constructed an argument in support of private healthcare care.
For want of a better expression there are tonnes of things that do need money throwing at them - the Tories have made sure of that.
Again Centrists doing god's work for the Tories under the idea that we're all naive. The only thing that's naive is to believe the stupidity that is the private sector funding the state.
Point is we simply don’t need private healthcare. Don’t need to go much further than that.
It doesn't matter who provides the care, it's largely a red herring. The vast majority of German healthcare is privately owned insurance companies, the vast vast majority of folks are happy to use the NHS, and when it's funded properly it works just fine. The UK private healthcare sector is an insignificant proportion of the overall healthcare spend. The UK NHS healthcare budget was £233 billion last year, the private sector is worth approx £9 billion. It isn't the problem that needs resolving.
Before any reforms of the the private healthcare sector, put: Focus, funding, a proper social healthcare system, retention, resolving the looming public health crisis (obesity lifestyle illness etc etc),and put in place plans to deal with an increasingly elderly population, and look at health interventions properly ( i.e. regulate the food industry comprehensively). Look at the role regulators are playing, to incentive schemes with unintended consequences. All these will have a massively more impactful effect on the nations health than anything you might do to the private healthcare sector. It would literally be fiddling while Rome burns otherwise.
All v true. The private sector is an irritant though
"Long term visas."
Second class citizens? Why bother when you can go anywhere else in Europe and keep all your rights, and more importantly so can your family.
Why bother when you can go anywhere else in Europe and keep all your rights, and more importantly so can your family.
Money. It would be very easy for the UK govt to waive tax for specific sectors to incentivise people to come here.
The private sector is an irritant though
It depends what you mean by "the private sector" Every GP practice aims to make a profit (it's how the partners in the practice are paid after all) nearly 90% of the mental health beds that the NHS use are owned by the private sector, and both those elements are wholly in that £9 billion privately earned portion of the healthcare market. And while you could bring every GP practice into the public sector, how much would that cost to do? And what would achieve if your aim to improve the health outcomes of the population? Is that the place that you want to reform ahead of say; the food we eat? or the fact that we have more and more elderly folks that aren't being looked after properly. What's going to give you the biggest bang for your buck without just pissing off every single GP in the country?
A bigger issue for the NHS is bed blocking and lack of social care. Whilst funding for social care is a major issue (people used to look after their own relatives in old age now expect the state to pick up the cost whilst pocketing their inheritance) we just don’t have the number of people willing to go into the care sector available in this country. Increasing wages would undoubtedly help but being in caring role requires a specific skillset and attitude, one most people don’t have.
So you say throwing money at something is naive and then give an example where throwing money at it is exactly what is required and you have even said it yourself
"funding for social care is a major issue" and "Increasing wages would undoubtedly help"
How naive of you.
"It depends what you mean by “the private sector”"
(Don't seem to be able to quote any more)
I meant private medicine, consultants doing a couple of sessions a week on top of their NHS work in a private sector clinic to pay the school fees and the skiing somewhere nice etc. As one of my good riding friends does (not the school fees but some nice other stuff). This is the norm.
"So you say throwing money at something is naive and then give an example where throwing money at it is exactly what is required"
This started with the idea you can do it in a year. Of course more money is needed. But people changing jobs, training up, being recruited, forming new organisations etc takes time. You can give the system more money but it takes time to digest, as new labour found at a time when health budgets were doubled. It doesn't necessarily get spent at first where it needs to be spent (eg hosp sector growing many times faster than primary care, which is hugely more efficient - prevention, acting early - and where 90% of patient contacts happen.)
This is the norm.
But is it really a problem that needs an urgent resolution? One of my salaried GPs does weekend work on one of the many online GP services, it mostly seems to involve her writing 'scripts for Viagra. Another does medico-legal work for one of the indemnity unions . Neither of these effect their work within the NHS.
Urgent resolution? Nah. Very deep into "really not worth thinking about it" territory, though your GP example does make me worry it could be an increasingly hard and growing problem, and maybe we should stiffen our resolve. [Yes, I did come back to edit just to put that sentence in. Shoot me. Please.]
I guess my views were partly informed by John Yates' book "Private Eye, Nose and Throat" from over 20 years ago. A leading health services researchers based in Birmingham Uni, the only way he could get a handle on doctors' private sector activity was by hiring (ironically enough) private detectives to follow them and see when they nipped off to do a quick clinic. An unusual use of research funding but hey.
“I meant private medicine, consultants doing a couple of sessions a week on top of their NHS work in a private sector clinic to pay the school fees and the skiing somewhere nice etc. As one of my good riding friends does (not the school fees but some nice other stuff). This is the norm.”
This was a criticism of Nye Bevan at the inception of the NHS, so nothing new @johnx2:
‘he succumbed to the consultants, not wanting to fight against them, as well as the deeply suspicious GPs. Accordingly, the consultants had their fears of having to work for local authorities allayed; financially had their mouths ‘stuffed with gold’! David Kynaston - A World to Build (Austerity Britain 1945-48).
This started with the idea you can do it in a year.
Correct - loads of things can be done within a year with the money and motivation. Everything would clearly not be fixed within a year as many things take longer than that but that doesn't mean a lot of things cannot be noticeably improved within a year, which was my point.
My comment was provocative in response to the "it will take 10 years" to sort anything out.
Provooative would be one word. Daft would be another 🙂
What are we going to do? Kidnap them?
Nope, we need to attract them here to work which is the same before Brexit as it is afterwards. I was just questioning why someone thought leaving the EU had any bearing. Pay enough money, give them visas and other incentives and they will come and work here.
This is only to help through the immediate need while we put in place longer term training, incentives to get people into NHS, better rewards, better culture etc, etc,.
Provooative would be one word. Daft would be another
So you don't think a government could make noticeable improvements to areas most in need within a year given enough money and having the motivation?
do you honestly think that's what I said?
Provooative would be one word. Daft would be another 🙂
Let's not beging to start to turn things around because someone on the internet called things 'daft'.
I notice this all the time - especially with Reeves and Starmer - they lack substance and detail. Simply because no one appears to actually want to fix anything for fear of upsetting the current shit-show, and because there is no political will.
Just changing tack slightly.
https://twitter.com/alexnunns/status/1770783028299595960?s=20
This breed of politician ...
I loved my old squelchy open bath Marzocchis!!
RCT3is were my plushest ever ride
"Money. It would be very easy for the UK govt to waive tax for specific sectors to incentivise people to come here."
What do you think would be the political and social consequences of hiring a large number of foreigners to live and work in the UK on temporary visas while paying zero tax? Do you think it would create a more cohesive, integrated and equitable society?
Do you think it would create a more cohesive, integrated and equitable society?
See that lack of imagination I was talking about up the thread? I think eliminating waiting lists, providing people with dentists and enabling them to see their GP would defuse the immigration problem by removing one of the issues the far right use to stoke hatred. As with anything in a market economy, if you have the money, you can buy solutions, and money is not a problem.
I see that Starmer has jumped on the bandwagon about the new England football kit. I think it's great that he's focusing on the important issues of the day, and not pandering to dickheads.
I see that Starmer has jumped on the bandwagon about the new England football kit. I think it’s great that he’s focusing on the important issues of the day, and not pandering to dickheads.
Unfortunately there's no way to win that game.
- Ignore it and he's unpatriotic and out of touch with the common man
- Talk about it and he's wasting time on unimportant things
He could of course have just said it is a representation of the England flag in a similar way the Union flag was represented in 2012 and was just a visual image on the back of a jersey and not the actual flag which would be on the front chest if anywhere so let's not get too excited about it as we have much more important things to deal with.
I see that Starmer has jumped on the bandwagon about the new England football kit
He's a fully signed up gooner eng-er-lan type, as evidenced by his wearing of a Stone Island top in an interview once. Any football hooligan will know that displaying 'the badge' is an overt sign of solidarity with that community so it's no surprise he's piled on the St George's flag debate at the first opportunity. He didn't jump on the bandwagon, he was already the driver.
"And the flag is used by everybody, it's unifying, it doesn't need to change. We just need to be proud of it. So I think they should just reconsider this and change it back. I'm not even sure they can properly explain why they thought they needed to change in the first place. They could also reduce the price of the shirts."
If that's outrage... then he's even dull and overly mild mannered when he's outraged.
Strip looks very traditional to me... you need to be close enough to kiss a player on the neck to see this small detail... really don't see why anyone would care in the slightest about it. The price of the replicas is bonkers though.
As for Starmer commenting on football... at least he's genuinely interested in the sport. Unlike so many other politicians who want to be seen to be associated with it. For me, it's just something else that adds to his ordinary boringness though. I'd rather he was into growing fruit and veg down the allotment.
https://twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/1771217380145815831?t=UsgQnMmy_IuAO0Os0ZgxLw&s=19
Apart from the obvious point here can someone much more knowledgeable explain this to me because some expert on STW said Britain had nothing to do with arming Israel?