Sir! Keir! Starmer!

 I can reduce waiting times in a year though by getting the staff required

What a hopelessly naive comment. Where are these professionally trained and experienced practitioners coming from, we left the EU remember, are you poaching them from struggling countries in Africa? Perhaps you want to steal them from the private 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. Plus it would haven to be a huge wage increase to get people back. Your statement lacks any credibility.

Enticing them back isn’t a simple case of offering more money, people generally leave due to conditions, another long term problem. The NHS is borked due to terrible government interference, over demand, lack of social care, too high expectations from the public, awful use of resources and the victim culture amongst NHS workers. None of which are simple to sort and certainly not in a year. Money doesn’t fix everything.

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

Where do you think the private sector are getting their trained staff from?

Where are these professionally trained and experienced practitioners coming from, we left the EU remember, are you poaching them from struggling countries in Africa?

Clue, where are the people who are leaving going?

And why can’t we employ people from the EU?

Money doesn’t fix everything.

It sort of does though.  Those conditions and working culture you are referencing can all be fixed but need money to do so.

Because you left.

And even if you decide you want to hire them, and change the rules you’ll need to pay as there’s no job security for these people as the UK might change the rules again on a political whim

Long term visas.  Next question.

The NHS has a multitude of issues, but blaming the private sector isn’t going to get you far frankly. A good portion of the folks that work in the sector are also employed by the NHS, and it’s [relative to the NHS] teeny anyway. There’s a short term back log that mostly a legacy of COVID, a long term issue that lots of folks are living longer with lots of quite serious and chronic disease, and that we don’t have a properly funded social care system to remove them from acute care once they find themselves there. and we’ve shed workers becasue apart from a few towards the top of the tree, it’s shit money for doing an ever-increasingly complex and thankless task.

It’s probably a decade or more of increased funding and prioritising that’s going to cost billions and billions rather than: “Here’s the ten things to do now”

Money doesn’t fix everything

Clearly lack of money causes carnage in the economy and society.

We have a huge problem where  the majority of things that have failed in this country can be traced back to lack of government spending or at least material conditions of the public.

Without money and taxation, there is no way for the government to provision itself and give its currency value to purchase things it needs to run a country.

You also need pounds to pay your taxes so you absolutely need to earn money.

That’s just the way things are set up.

The NHS has a multitude of issues, but blaming the private sector isn’t going to get you far frankly.

The private sector robs the NHS of labour and resources available to those that can’t afford to pay.

End of story.

I wish people would understand the country can only get it resources and labour from the same pool. You put some of those in the private sector and you’ve just done something extremely regressive – you’ve made it harder for those without funds to access treatment.

(And they’ve probably used state resources to learn too.)

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

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/20/the-guardian-view-on-labours-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.

In other news I see Keir Starmer has again shown his leanings towards the football hooligan cohort. How dare they mess around with the biggest racist symbol in this country! They’ll be coming for Stone Island next. 🙄

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).

And why can’t we employ people from the EU?

What are we going to do? Kidnap them?

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?