Why doesn't anyone have a proper plan for the NHS?

@TizerorFizz
I'm sorry I must have not expressed myself very well in my post.
I completely agree with you that in many if not most cases it's not feasible to care for elderly parents it's a full-time job and you already have a full-time job as well as various other commitments!
Not to mention being in your 60s or older yourself and just not up to it.
We don't have any solutions to the change in age profile of the population.

@0sm0nthus I think that’s a bit unfair. Thousands if not millions of people help elderly relatives stay in their homes but dementia is entirely different. We have a diminished workforce due to caring duties. When the elderly are extremely frail, they simply cannot cop at home. They fall and life is on the edge of a cliff.

Other Families need to work and if someone needs 24 hour care it’s impossible to do that amount of care in the home. What if you don’t live close by? If people are retired and are happy with caring duties in retirement, so be it. I’ve certainly known this. Others need greater fulfilment or they get ill too.

@Kendodd , there are people living a threadbare existence in the UK and far too many, but poverty is defined as less than two-thirds of the average. I am certain that living in that zone is grim but there are a lot of worse places to be impoverished, and many of them don't have a welfare state or an NHS to pick up the pieces either.

If people live in poverty they have a medical card or pay £100 per year, taken at source from their income or benefits.
The situation can’t continue and if we want a better health system everyone needs to contribute. It benefits everyone, therefore everyone must pay.

This is true.
It seems to me that in quite a short space of time we've gone from a general attitude of:
"anyone who won't care for their elderly parents is selfish and wrong, they cared for you when you were a baby and so it's normal and right that you care for them when they are elderly and infirm"
To:
"Caring for the elderly and infirm is a huge and onerous task which should only be able to taken by professionals"
The plain truth is that not many people are willing to do this work and even fewer are willing to do it for the money that is on offer.

Yes, the dementia tax - what the media called the prepayment for future ederly care that T May suggested. And then lost a load of gov seats in the election.

But how thick can people be - do all us oldies reaaaalllly think oh, it won't happen to me. I know of several young people ie in their 50s and 60s with dementia, and/or Parkinsons.
I suggest a scare tactic - lots of information leaflets showing the lives of people with dementia in care homes - I don't mean bad homes where they are not cared for but just people in care homes with severe dementia - that's scary enough. Then some statistics as to how many people will get it - eg the stats show that by the time they are 78 X number of people in your street could have dementia.
Lots of information on how much it costs per week for care home fees - spell it out.
Lots of information on the sale of your home, once you are gone, being used to fund your spouses care.

I can only think people are in total denial or ignorant.

Also, if its not an 'everyone pays' thing, the majority of people children/elderly/benefits using the health service wouldn't pay anyway. This would add a layer of expensive bureaucracy and might lead to resentment in that the people paying for the service (through taxes) are the only people would don't get to access it for free.
I kind of agree with a small £10 max charge per use, but British people are just too poor to be able to afford even that.

You would have to put the same charge for A&E. I could, kind of, agree, except, we have a really significant amount of people, including children, living in absolute poverty in the UK. Plenty of people just can't afford £10.

The one thing that this government has done, and isn't talking about, is set up a plan to massively increase training over the next 8 years, taking advantage of the relatively large age cohort about to enter uni.

It makes obvious sense, the restrictions on medical school places were always unnecessarily strict, but it will have problems (are there even enough teachers/trainers?), it'll cost a lot, and 8 years is a long time.
https://www.health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/how-feasible-are-the-nhs-long-term-workforce-plan-commitments-on-training

Theresa May tried that about social care.

It didn't work

Yeah but it’s worse to ignore the elephant in the room. The public want to know there is a plan in place…

We need a minimum fee for GP appointments £10 at the very least and everyone pays it. It needs reform and someone has to have the political gumption to do something about it…

I do think we have to move to something like Germany where I understand people who are better off pay something towards it.

The NHS was founded at a time, which thankfully we have moved on from, when old people in poor health didn't live long, seriously disabled people didn't live for a long time or survive early birth etc. It's great that's no longer the case, but a free system is going to have difficulty managing the long term care or so many more people. Also, when it was founded it was more likely there was someone (let's face it, a woman) available at home to look after people as they recovered - a wife, mum, sister, maybe even a neighbour, who didn't do paid work outside the home and could help out. And that's just not the case anymore and because we can't afford for everyone to have time for everyone to fully recover with someone looking after them, that also creates costs and challenges for the NHS.

We have to accept that if we have an ageing society, we cannot keep up the NHS without those who could afford it (me being one of them) paying extra towards it.

I think nursing and medical degrees need to be subsidised heavily or outright free so that people will feel able to choose to take them if they want to. I'm sure the time and expense must rule them out for people who would otherwise do it.

Cos that would involve having to have some policies that are unpopular before a general election.

Because it needs root and branch reform, which would need cross party co-operation. And they don’t do that.🙄

Teresa May came up with insurance….

@LittleWeed2 ? You are somewhat out of touch with the needs of the very elderly. They need some care in the night. They need to mix with others. That’s actually very beneficial. People really don’t want this work. The staff we had were £30 an hour, but they don’t want to be caring for just one person and they not on call 24 hours a day like care home staff are. Plus I’m not employing anyone! What family at weekends? There’s me. It’s not a job I can do. There’s no option but to use a home. It’s way better than being at home and boredom. DM now has activities, lots of people to talk to and no worries about property upkeep. Also who pays for care at home when you need to sell your house to get the money?

Teresa May come il with insurance. It’s the only way.

There are no staff and homes are closing. Home is £5500 a month. Very few were much cheaper.

so it’s absolutely impossible to get carers -2at £30,000 a year - to come to the house daily or maybe 5days a week with family doing weekend?

Care Homes wrap people in cotton wool so that they live for years longer than if they were at home and mixing with other people

@DianaTaverner No one wants the work. Staffing is a huge issue. Most care providers had no spare capacity. So it doesn’t matter where the money comes from, there’s no staff.

Allowing a charge to be put against people's homes for in-home care could (not necessarily would, I grant you) allow for funding of a reasonable intermediate level of in-home care beyond the crazy 15 minutes 4 times a day which is currently all that can be afforded by the councils.

a plan for dealing with an aging and unfit population
Unless we can find effective ways to incentivize people to take responsibility for their own health we are fu(ked.

@DramaLlamaBangBang My mum has had to sell her house to fund a care home. There is no option unless you can get sufficient care at home. When mum was 98 we managed to secure 2 hours a week private care. At 99 the council offered 4 visits a day which would be around 15 minutes per visit. Totally ludicrous and no conversation with anyone until her 4th stay in hospital. There are no staff and homes are closing. Home is £5500 a month. Very few were much cheaper.

Bed blocking is mainly caused by not enough elderly care places or people to care for the elderly at home. That's what needs to be looked at, but no one wants to face it. Probably because it will probably mean telling people to sell their homes. The ' dementia tax' was probably the closest anyone got and it scuppered Teresa Mays government.

If beds blocked are the problem that has to be solved first.

I would ban all the rainbow schemes. That wasted huge amounts.

If we gave visas to 1.3m people last year we need loads of extra doctors and dentists to meet their needs and that's assuming we have enough doctors and dentists to meet the current requirements. Which we don't.

We need to train more staff. We need better systems and a plan for dealing with an aging and unfit population.

That plan is probably not kind. And there's the difficulty. We either fail everyone or attempt to do better in difficult ways.

You cannot get more taxes from
people in more expensive areas. They have had to pay more and have higher costs too. London snd SE people already pay more tax than everyone else put together. Who exactly is rich now? Dwindling numbers of you have a mortgage snd dc. The better off are many pensioners. They might have paid for 40 years (few people pay NI for 50 years) but they continue to use the NHS. At a higher rate.

I do agree those not working need to work and pay tax but we have a part time work culture. Some people just prefer to live on less money.