To wonder what the NHS will be like in 10 years?

It will be just through another restructure - these happen about every ten years. It's just been through one now, and the last one was around 2012/3. This one is about more localised care, a move away from centralised assurance processes/directions, and towards more preventative health care.

I imagine the next one will be back to more centralised top down ways of working.

What does your focus group think, OP? Are you working for an agency or for a party themselves? Are you hearing what you want to hear from this demographic?

Ten years ago everyone said in ten years there'll be no NHS, we'll be like America.

But we still very much have an NHS. I've had amazing treatment this year, so has my mum.

Honestly? I’d like it gone. The only way to save it now is to totally stop. Then start again. I’d much rather contribute financially than have the shit offer now. There is absolutely a better , more cost effective model.

But all the directors and managers need to go. Then rebuild.

I actually wish this would be the case but think how slow the NHS has been to adapt to even basic technology. You can't sign up for email alerts over paper letters. No unified systems. NHS staff seem to spend an eternity inputting information which all could be speeded up. Only some GPs have online booking. It's decades behind where technology is in other sectors.

I agree @CoatOfArms when was it the envy of the world??

More people will go private so they will max capacity there and it will have to be a hybrid model.

When was it ever the "envy of the world"? I have no time for this fetishisation of the NHS. It is an unwieldy, inefficient beast of an organisation which might have been fit for purpose in the 1950s but certainly isn't now.

It needs a bomb putting underneath it and for us to move towards a European model. Like they have in the Netherlands, France or Germany. This idea that everything will be hunky dory if Labour get in, or if we pour another few billion into the black funding hole is just crazy.

There won't be an NHS as we know it in 10 years time. What they will do is systematically run it down until it gets so poor and underfunded that we start going private instead because anything will seem better than what we are left with.

Depends on the next 2 General Elections.

It wont exist... not even in 5 years

It depends whether we have a Labour or Conservative government. If Tory, the NHS will still be very much there, but in a worsened state. Under Labour, I think it will still degrade but not as badly. Labour need to invest in social care. That would take some of the strain off the NHS.

I think this is one area where AI will be very useful, lots of dr’s time will be freed up by technology that does a better job than a human- analysis test results etc.

It’s probably difficult to quantify in years but actually, 10 years is quite a long time.

Perhaps a bit leftfield as a comparison, and obviously there are different elements here (some legal) such as the government perhaps having a duty of care re providing a health service, but we weren’t prepared for COVID, didn’t see it coming and we, as a society, just had to deal with it. Of course, I’m not saying that I want to lose the NHS but in my limited experience of using it recently, it shocked me just how overstretched it is.

I think it will very much be like the US; private healthcare financed by the individual through insurance or as an employment ‘benefit’ or a basic/dire need access to healthcare for free for those who can’t afford it.

I don’t think the NHS will exist in 10 years’ time, sadly. It will be private healthcare for the majority with access for those who can’t afford that.