How Can We Save the NHS ?

[LuluJakey1]

Just that. I am interested- having been discussing this with DH, SIL and BIL tonight (we get a bit wild here on Saturday nights)- in what your thought are on how we save and protect our wonderful NHS so it remains 'free at the point of delivery' to all citizens and continues to provide high quality, cutting edge health care as well as more mundane but very necessary healthcare.
This is what we came up with as ideas on the basis that it will inevitably cost us all more and should if we want to protect it. We (DH and I) do, we don't want to see it privatised and us all having to have health insurance and ending up like America.

1. Remove some common items which can be bought cheaper at the chemist without a prescription from being available on prescription eg calpol, paracetemol, asprin, E45 and various creams etc. There would be a list.
2. Every person over the age of 18 to pay a yearly one off NHS flat rate charge of £200. No exceptions. Deducted at sources - wages or benefits or pension. Anyone under 18 to pay £100 (parental responsinility to 18)

On the basis of some stats we found from the National Data Office online, there are 15.6 million under the age of 18 and 52 million over the age of 18 . If we work those figures that would raise almost £12000million every year. OR We all pay an NHS monthly contribution based on our family size and income eg 1% of salary per family member and 2% for any family with an income of more than 100,000 but everyone pays, no exceptions. OR We pay £10 for each visit to a GP and £100 for each hospital stay, flat rate, prescriptions on top.

1. No one working in an NHS hospital or as a GP should earn more than £150,000 a year - this is to stop the ridiculous salaries of NHS Trust Executives.
2. Deals must be done with drugs companies so the NHS is not ripped off by them charging extremely high prices for life saving medication.

5 Plastic surgery, vasectomy, sterelisation, breast enhancement (apart from following cancer) , breast reduction (apart from in cases where it affects health) in fact any surgery done for cosmetic purposes or want rather than a health necessity should not be available on the NHS.

1. Smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts should not be treated for illnesses related to their addictions.
2. Anyone who calls out an ambulance for unnecessary reasons should be charged for that ambulance or at least fined.
3. Drunks should not be treated in A and E.
4. Drunks should not be picked up by ambulances.

Now I know these are provocative. We did not all agree on them but they were suggestions. They were not instead of National Insurance- that would continue.

Interested in your ideas .

I also know they are a bit blunt force ideas and any that were put into action would need refining. Just take them as rough ideas.

Because I honestly can’t be bothered to discuss your incredibly ill thought out ideas -

Why always smokers and drinkers? Why not fat people? Why not people who breed knowing that have a genetic disease?
Why not people or ice skate and break an ankle, or people who drive in snow? After all they 'knew the risks' No different to woman who have babies .... they know they need medical care and let's face it it's preventable!

I agree there should be some education based around using the NHS but your arguments are rubbish

Well come up with better ones then. I didn't claim they were good. It is a huge problem for us and one of our most precious assets as a country. What can we do to fund and protect it going forward?

Or should we accept it is no lnger workable to have an NHS and go down the road the American's have gone down?

Or should tax payers pay much higher taxes?

Americans not American's.

Mmmmnnn
And if it’s your teenage child who can’t maintain their own airway or inhales vomit due to excess alcohol? Should we let them die? If their a 19 year old girl whose fallen unconscious in an alleyway on the way back to her hall of residence should we leave her there?

What is unnecessary reason for calling an ambulance? Frightened first time mother whose baby has a high temperature (probably just a virus and calpol would do)? An frightened elderly person who has a panick attack because they hear someone outside? A diabetic teenager whose not taken their insulin and shovelled in lots of coke?

Smokers etc not treated - so we’d leave people to die with untreated lung cancer? What about a curable mouth cancer? What about runners with joint damage? Or women who chose to give birth and prolapsed? What about the alcoholic ex serviceman with PTSD after deploying to Afghanistan?

Cosmetic surgery isn’t currently available on the NHS.

So how will NHS function without doctors? 150k really isn’t a high salary for people with that degree of experience and training. Cap salaries and recruitment will become even harder than it is now. Still private healthcare would boom!

There is a list of prescribed drugs available. There is encouragement to use generic brands. Would you deny the baby of a homeless women surviving on food bank hand outs a free bottle of calpol?

Not sure I’d want to live in your society, to be honest.

What the NHS needs is proper funding. It remains one of the most efficient health services in the world with overall very good outcomes. People do take advantage and many now seem to lack common sense or listen to granny but the issue is really an ageing population, lack of social care provision and fewer beds per capita that anywhere else in Europe.

Those ideas don't just need refining, they need completely redoing.

If a drunk is ill can they be treated?
Who will decide if they're drunk? (Met a lovely lady with MS who said most days someone accused her of being drunk as she wasn't very steady when she walked).

I'm interested in the idea of some sort of payment, but there will be plenty who couldn't afford it.

I suspect the most successful way to save the NHS is to not vote conservative.

Let Doctors function as Doctors, instead of being dictated to by managers.

Enable Drs who’ve taken a career break (often for family reasons) to return to work. It’s incredibly hard to return to work as a Doctor. Yes, medicine moves on and changes, but if people were intelligent enough to train as Drs in the first place, they are intelligent enough to retrain.

Your suggestions are mostly ridiculous and are unworkable.

You do realise that addiction is an illness?

Make Health and Social Care one pot, that stops the arguing over who pays for what and reduces bed-blocking - would save millions.

So far there has been almost no other ideas. Happy to have the ones that came up tonight dismissed but come up with better.

I agree with Joy that not voting Conservative would probably be the best starting point.

I had plastic surgery on a facial deformity. I wanted to kill myself so your fucking wonderful idea is for me to have just lived with it?? What about burns victims who need extensive plastic surgery as you have just said a blanket ban on it?

Sterilisation stops unwanted children as there are no 100% effective forms of contraception. It’s not about want it’s a necessity in some cases.

Your are an absolute m

Too angry to even finish that!

10. Tackle poor housing. Both privately rented and socially rented.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/06/depressed-poor-housing-costs-nhs-14bn-year

Everyone needs to pay more tax.

Fluffy what you have described would be a medical need - not simly something you wanted done. If you read what I said, no one is suggesting anything done for medical reasons should be stopped. But for example, my SIL has a friend who has a breast enlargement 10 years ago because she wanted one and is now having a breast reduction- both times on the NHS.
Sterelisation can be avoided by not having sex if you can't use contraception reliably. For the vast majority - 99% + of people who use contraception properly, it works. There will always be cases where it doesn't but most f those are not people who wish to be sterelised. It's a question- if people wish to be sterelised, ahould they pay for that? Mnay alreday do. Most vasectomies now are done privately. Most were done on the NHS even 5 years ago but that has changed.

I have really poor eye sight, made worse by an accident. I can not see three inches infront of me without very strong glasses which I even wear in the bath and keep under my pillow because I need them as soon as I wake up. I can not have laser surgery because of my eye condition but could have a particular type of lens replacement surgery. The NHS won't fund that. It is going to cost us almost £20,000 at Moorfields in London if I go ahead. Should the NHS pay for that given how bad my sight is? They don't. I wouldn't call it cosmetic- it will become a disability. We will pay for it and I won't be bawling and shouting about it but we are lucky we can pay for it.

By unnecessary ambulance calls, we were talking about the people who ring dozens of times, sometimes several times a day, and the ambulance has to attend and they are told not to do it but keep doing it. Or the people who ring instead of getting a taxi when they have a minor injury. Not a mum genuinely worried about a baby or an elderly person who feels ill and scared.

Many alcoholics and drug addicts waste inordinate amounts of NHS resources - taken into A and E drunk, ask to be dried out or for rehabilitation, which has failed before, are offered it and walk straight out into an off licence or to a dealer.

Voting Labour will not be what saves the NHS, although I agree the Tories have by nature no desire to provide and preserve public services. They want the state to pay for as little as possible and their pals to benefit from running care homes, and privatised health, education and social care services. But whoever is in government, if the HNS is to be saved and properly funded, the money has to come from somewhere. Some things will have to change. What are those things? What is most palatable to us because we will have to pay for it one way or another.

I get free prescriptions because my thyroid gland does not work. I don't just get thyroxine, everything I am prescribed is free. I have asked to pay - last week there were 3 items on my prescription and I asked to pay for the other 2 - an antibiotic and an anti-depressant. The chemist would not allow me to. He said he is not allowed to do that because I have a medical exemption. Seems wasteful to me that if you have a medical exemption for one condition, you get every prescribed item free. I wonder how much that would save if it was not the case?

Are we entitled to fertility treatment on the NHS? In every situation?

They are challenging issues that upset people but there will be hard questions that have to be asked.

I hvae no issue with a consultant earning £150,000- although only a minicsule number do. I do have an issue with hospital CEOs earning £350,000 and a good number do.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2017/11/universal-credit-flaw-forcing-patients-risk-50-prescription-fine

It doesnt take a genius to work out that , rather than risk a fine some will go without the item they need which could make them more likely to end up in A and E.

For example in terms of fertility treatment, my friend's husband had cancer as a teenager - now in his 40s. He survived thank goodness but was left infertile. They had no free IVF on the NHS (because of their age) and had to pay for 4 lots privately and the last one worked. It has cost them about £20,000 in total. Another friend - early 30s - and her husband could not have children after a vasectomy reveral (second marriage for him, already had 3 children from previous marriage) and have had IVF funded to enable them to have two children. Seems unfair system which apparently works on localised NICE guidelines. Is one more or less worthy than the other? Should both be funded? Should neither? Are we entitled to have children of our own?

Helena That is typical of this government - welfare is not their priority. Useful, fair, workable systems are not their priority. Cutting benefits is.

However, for every honest person who worries about ticking the right box, there will be many who just tick. The chances of being caught are tiny. The numbers sampled and checked are tiny and the chances of being in that sample are tiny. Many think it is worth the risk. The government think presecription fraud is a significant issue but the resources required to deal with it are not available and not likely to be- the systems do not work in any knitted together way. Let's say I tick one of the many boxes. First they have to trcak me down, then somehow check I have what I said I had - medical exemption, job seekers, maternity exemption ,my age, etc etc. How do they do that when their systems do not speak to each other?

People should have the ability to opt out of the NHS, if they choose to go private then their tax should be reduced accordingly.

Same goes for pensions.

I am a Brit in the US, so far I find the US system to be better than the NHS. I have better coverage, and more choices

There was an interesting article on this on the BBC.

The main fact is that people over 60 cost the NHS 3 times as much, people over 85 cost the NHS 5 times as much. We have an ageing population and our social care is also not where we want/need it to be. In some ways the NHS is a victim of its own success. Keep people alive for longer, then they/we cost it even more.

There don’t seem to be many honest discussions about this (aside from pushing pension age up, despite stalling life expectancies). What should we do?

I suspect that the NHS will become casualty department & ambulance only. I suspect that will happen within the next 5 years

i can see this is predictably turning into a patient blaming thread.