NHS cuts

[glasnost]

protest against NHS cuts

[glasnost]

Get directly involved instead of venting on MN. (Pleasurable as that may be). Can't believe so many people in the UK are gambolling their way like docile little Spring lambs into a cruel, mean spirited epoch swallowing the lie that the cuts are necessary. There's our whole way of life and sense of national identity as fair play types at stake here.

[glasnost]

Hope you're all too busy scribbling to your MPs to post any comments on here. In fact, I'm sure you are. Tee hee.

[Chil1234]

As far as I'm aware the NHS budget has been 'ring-fenced'. Given that inflation is high and the cost of new drugs and latest treatments often outstrips inflation, I'm sure this means that they'd like to have more money to keep pace 100%. However, that is not the same thing as a 'cut'. If the Scottish and Welsh branches of the NHS can make ends meet without prescription charges it suggests there's still some bunce in the English system....

As long as the treatment is still free to the user at the point of need and as long as the service is as good as or preferably better than it is now, then I don't think we should hang onto the status quo just for the sake of it. Things move on and the NHS, like any other big organisation, cannot be preserved in aspic.

[GabbyLoggon]

Why did Camerooney thinks his NHS plan would be popular? All the research suggests it is widely unpopular. Hence the relaunch. I suppose it is Liberal activists who have forced the issue. Plus Shirley B Wlliams. (She took her time to go public)

[slug]

Because shiny Dave is well known for only listening to his very tigh in-group. These are almost all men who he's known since his Eaton/Bullingdon club days. Dave's mates think it's a good idea and Dave listens to Dave's mates.

[RamblingRosa]

Chil IMO "ring fencing" is a big fat lie. 50,000 jobs set to be axed

[Chil1234]

@Rambling Rosa.... I disagree with the 'fat lie' part. If the funding stays the same but the various costs go up (everything from keeping the lights on to expensive new treatments) it's pretty obvious that savings are still required. All 'ring-fencing' means is that the NHS doesn't have to cut its spending to the same level as other departments.

And Gabby... I don't think any plan involving reforming the NHS has ever been popular. That's why it's being dealt with early in the parliament. People don't like change as a rule and the NHS has this 'sacred cow' status for some bizarre reason. Lansley (Conservative) has been working on the NHS reforms for many years - well before last year's election.

[GabbyLoggon]

The effect of the CUTS has not happened yet. These screens will be on fire in 9 months time. And Camerooney and Cleggy will be hiding behind meaningless publicity stunts. (Not ryming slang)

S

[GabbyLoggon]

Life is to me a sort of tragi-comedy. So we could allhave some fun with STUNTS (I dont have time to do it today)

[glasnost]

Gabby make time. Don't be a Jeremy.

[ttosca]

Duncan Smith gaffe prompts Labour waiting-lists attack

Waiting lists in the NHS are already increasing just one year into coalition government, Iain Duncan Smith has admitted.

The embarrassing gaffe prompted Labour to launch a blistering attack on the work and pensions secretary, saying he had inadvertently "admitted the truth".

"Waiting times have already increased since last year and maternity services at Queens and Whipps are already struggling to cope," Mr Duncan Smith told the Evening Standard, as he campaigned against the closure of his own local hospital.

"Patients in my constituency will really suffer if this closure goes ahead and we must prevent it."

Shadow health minister John Healey said: "This is the first admission from the Tory-led Government that the NHS is starting to go backwards under the Tories.

"Patients are starting to see waiting times rise, frontline NHS jobs go and services cut back.

"This is not what people expected when David Cameron promised to protect the NHS."

The outburst came on the same day that a confidential Department of Health memo revealed that the listening exercise on NHS reforms had many no-go are

www.politics.co.uk/news/health/duncan-smith-gaffe-prompts-labour-waiting-lists-attack-$21388272.htm

[Thamestrekker]

There'll be another chance to demonstrate against Lansley's cuts to the NHS (which will be implemented by GPs, whether they like it or not) on Tuesday evening, 17th May: www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=204132966274030

It'd be great if anyone from mumsnet wants to talk at the demo. For example, about the effect that handing maternity or child services to 'any willing provider' is likely to have, or any grievances you may have about cuts to child benefit, while tax money will be channelled to private healthcare under these proposals.

Contact jim fagin on 07914 529959 or email [email protected] if you'd like to talk. Or else just come support us. We already have GPs, nurses, OTs, consultants, support workers, students, pensioners and MPs lined up. Please lend your voice, we want real people involved.

[earthworm]

Surely waiting times were always going to rise, given that the targets were relaxed to allow hospitals to treat according to need rather than time waiting?

[Xenia]

The labour waiting list thing though was always a huge great Labour con. They cut lists of X and then Y was much longer.

[Mellowfruitfulness]

Just seen this, Glasnost. thanks for posting it. Have sent an email.

[Mellowfruitfulness]

Just realised - the vote's already happened, hasn't it??? My MP will think I'm nuts. Oh well ...

[Thamestrekker]

@mellowfruitfulness
No! The vote hasn't happened, it's not a law yet, and it won't be if we keep telling our MPs not to do it! However, the Department of Health are continuing as if it was a law, even though it has been 'paused' by Cameron for consultation because the opposition has been so large. (don't believe the 'pause' it's a spin)

@earthworm
abolishing waiting list targets is not a method of providing quicker care to those who need it most, that's Tory spin. It's a way of no-one being accountable for longer lists caused by underinvestment.

[chubsasaurus]

NONONONONONONONO

PLEASE DO NOT SEND THAT LETTER

YOUR MP WILL NEVER SEE IT. Their poor researcher (like me) will, and will have to spend a few hours doing overtime per day to respond to each letter on top of their normal work load. If you really care please have the decency to personally write a letter rather than enter your postcode, click a button, give over-worked and underpaid staff a huge amount more work and have no effect whatsoever on the government.

It's quarter past 12 and I got home 2 hours ago because of the fucking irritating 38 degrees campaign.

Please think before you click. It makes not a blind bit of difference to policy and turns House of Commons staff into sleep deprived, shakey wrecks

[chubsasaurus]

they're also not Andrew Lansley's personally made cuts so it's a ridiculous statment to make; they will or will not be made by the Department of Health of the coalition government that was democratically elected. Poor Lansley, the policy may be shite but they are not a result of him sitting scheming with evil red eyes masturbating over termination of the NHS.

[Thamestrekker]

Glad to know someone is taking notice of these letters and as much as I have sympathy for your plight, I'm afraid the issues around this bill take precendence over your own issues with having to work overtime. I know for a fact that MPs total the number of letters they receive on a topic, and they get frustrated if they don't get as many letters about the NHS as they do about forests. I hope you are being paid extra for all your hard work, may I suggest you get some shut eye now.

[Mellowfruitfulness]

Chubsasaurus, sorry if my post was the last thing you wanted to see after a long day. But I had already sent it when I wrote about it on here.

Clearly people do need to be able to write to MPs, and even though I didn't phrase the email myself, it said what I wanted to say. OK, it's less effort for me, but it's just as strongly felt as if I had spent 6 hours on it. Why would it have meant less work for you if I had written it myself, btw? Surely if lots of people send in the same email, you can write one standard response?

Also, the 38 degrees campaign is run by people who are doing something to change things they feel really strongly about, probably for no money and in their own time. I know political activists also stay up till the wee small hours - unpaid - and their campaigns are a great way to get people involved, imo, even if in a small way.

But getting home at 10.15 is no life for you. I hope you're taking some time off after the elections?

Oh, and if you are working for my MP, don't out me on here when you get my email!

[Mellowfruitfulness]

I have already received an answer from my MP, who is totally against the NHS cuts, and calls it 'privatisation through the back door'. He says American companies are just waiting to buy up current providers, etc.

I've asked him if I can quote from his email here.

[Mellowfruitfulness]

Not sure if anyone is reading this any more, but for the record, the Labour MP I emailed said: ?By handing over £80bn of the NHS budget to GPs there is an effective privatisation of the service. There is already evidence that major US medical conglomerates are looking to purchase packages of local GP practices in order to get control of significant sums of public funds in order to commission health services. This is the unintended consequence of using the visualisation of a popular local GP commissioning services on the behalf of the local community, when, in actual fact, large multi-national medical profiteers will control our NHS. The Shadow Health Secretary hit the nail on the head when he described this policy as ?ripping the National out of the National Health Service?.

This at a time when patient satisfaction with the NHS is at record levels but I am concerned that as a result of the Government?s reforms and their £3 billion reorganisation of the NHS, services will suffer and become less, rather than more patient-centred'.

Now I shall have to name-change ...

[Xenia]

Well Labour brought in al ot of market reforms to the NHS, set up those trusts and let GPs offer services from their practices previously provided by hospitals.

[Chil1234]

"This at a time when patient satisfaction with the NHS is at record levels ..."

Where? In the last few months we've had some terrible stories doing the rounds about the NHS. MN boards are littered with people who have had bad experiences with GPs and hospitals. In my own family, two members have been left dangerously ill because of NHS failings. And a friend, having been newly diagnosed with diabetes, was then left to flounder by herself, unmonitored with inappropriate medication, and ended up in hospital on the verge of organ failure.

Patient satisfaction is patchy at best with the NHS because patients have very little power and say in the process. If there was a real alternative to the NHS (beyond private healthcare which many can't afford), I think we'd find out how dissatisfied people were. As it is, we have Hobson's Choice, health providers take advantage of their monopoly status and we are stuck with making the best of a bad job.