So the NHS has long gone

[DarkKarmaIlama]

At what point do we think the government will do something about the massive elephant in the room the NHS has fucked off out of the window and is never returning.

This healthcare no man’s land is quite frankly terrifying. What are your predictions on this? All I keep reading is “it will get worse”. Can it actually get any worse?

Always wondered this. The French seem to like theirs, the Germans too, though they grumble about all the taxes and deductions!

It is an issue but you can't just turf people out who so require a level of care, the crux is that they need to be somewhere and unfortunately social care can't provide enough beds. These aren't people who can just go home. That said the government has been aware of the aging population for many years but has done little to invest and plan for the increase in need for this kind of care.

If every nhs visit cost you £5 that would be enough to pay each member of the nhs over £2000 a year more

So it's not that simple as the person who loses their job during cancer treatment would not be able to find a lot of £5 under their sofa , but it does sound sort of achievable

I don't think the issue is the NHS.
The biggest issue is social care!

The nhs is having to pick up the massive gap that social care is not covering.

We just can’t afford to pay for all these people anymore but it’s not an easy problem to solve as it’s so emotionally charged and the decisions are impossibly difficult.

It’s not just people living too long, it’s also babies being born prematurely/with complex needs who wouldn’t have survived just a few years ago.

My experience with the NHS has mostly been really poor, the staff are so clearly overstretched. I think you have to be a very selfless person to want to work there as there are much easier jobs which pay better.

I do know people who have had good experiences but they are outnumbered by people who had bad experiences.

Both are a problem
Both need fixing
Both need money / money to make people think the job is worthwhile

We could raise say £100 pp per year on income tax

We could raise taxes on big businesses- windfall taxes

We could legalise drugs and raise taxes on the sale of drugs

I was just listening to radio and 1 in 7 or 14000 people in beds don’t need to be there. That’s a major issue it seems

Many people in hospital beds may well be medically fit but are waiting for say a rehab bed in a stroke unit or a neuro unit after a tumour removal or need extensive therapy after an amputation.

None of this can be done by a MW social care worker.

The "they don't need to be there isn't always true"

Why do i know this? ...my DD is involved in all of the above and has to argue patients cases against folk who just want them gone (often to home and family that cannot cope) but they will just be back in again unless suitable post hospital care is provided.... and that in many cases isn't 3 x 45min visits that dickhead Barclay thinks social care is.

Dickhead?... harsh... but true... this was the brexitier who as Brexit secretary quit because he didn't know his brief and couldn't do his job.

I imagine a fair few are being held up by lack of paperwork and people to do it too. My dad was in hospital for 2 months in 2020 after major, unexpected emergency surgery. Although I warned her, my mum was very surprised by the hoops that needed jumping through to get him out -- and that was to a more or less suitable house, with plenty of money to rent a stairlift and pay for carers if needed.

It must be very much harder with no money and no-one to advocate for you.

Wow
they were attempting unsafe discharges on my folks from 2018.

Surprising to hear they aren’t just discharging patients? Earlier this year my elderly relative was discharged home despite being unable to cope after hip surgery. They said she met the criteria to go home, even though she couldn’t walk or shower or stand in the kitchen to cook. They didn’t care that she obviously couldn’t cope - their ticky box exercise said they were allowed to kick her out, so they did. I had to take her to my house and take two weeks off work, she had my bed and I slept on the sofa. So my experience is that they are just slinging people out and expecting their families to pick up the slack.

I've just had several weeks unexpectedly in hospital getting my life saved. The NHS isn't gone, or dead.
My treatment has been mixed, with some superb, some middling, and some quite basic and unnecessarily harsh, but ultimately it has been free and literally life saving and in many countries I doubt I'd have been considered worthy of saving, so yes, it's a mess, but thank you to all in it who've given me another crack and and a bit longer to be with my family.

So my experience is that they are just slinging people out and expecting their families to pick up the slack.

I think it's partly a cultural thing. Many other cultures this would be the norm, whereas here we expect the state to intervene and look after elderly relatives. It's not easy as most people work long hours and cannot afford big enough properties to have relatives stay while they recover, but it certainly has a huge impact.

Well the NHS are still here (trust a bitch who checks in everyday) however, what amazes me is the general public’s opinion “the government should step in” like they could help anything. The government is the very reason we are where we are with constant unrealistic goals where their goalposts never stop moving then just when you feel like this is over the limit of what we have capacity to do, stress is through the roof and it can’t get worse they government (that should “step in”)decide to pull the funds and each board can pick up the costs...it’s ok we were already down so give us a boot (in the position we were put) clean under the bus

Of course it hasn't GONE. What a ridiculous scaremongering thread!

I come from a country where people do look after their relatives but most people don't have huge homes either. Mainly 80-100 sq metre 3 bed flats so like a Victorian workers terrace without the stairs or garden. There is just such a stigma if you don't care for your parents. People would gossip and say what a dreadful son/daughter you are..to be fair, people do hire domestic helpers to do a lot of the heavy lifting but that is two extra people in your home and domestic helper isn't trained either...

Many other cultures this would be the norm, whereas here we expect the state to intervene and look after elderly relatives.

This has been traditionally the norm in places where the life expectancy has been short and there have been few old people compared to the number of younger people who can shoulder the responsibility. It's not about "lovely traditional responsible cultures versus feckless Westerners who can't be bothered."

As life expectancies in these countries increase and the number of elderly grow in comparison to the number of working age people, the same bloody issues are developing in these countries where people traditionally looked after parents, and they are all facing the same dilemmas.

China is now facing this problem and is in a slow motion panic about what they are going to do about it.

It will become free at point of use for an and e only soon. Once triaged and assessed at A and e the meter starts running and the bills will rack up just like in the states unless you have decent health insurance through work. Whatever happens the poor and disabled will suffer as they so often do. It is only a matter of time before this “ free” nhs is scaled right back to the most basic of service

They do face the same dilemmas but at the same time, there is a bigger societal expectation to look after elderly relatives. It is not possible for all hence the panic on what to do about those who fall through the net. My grandparents always lived with us for example. Several of my cousin's have parents living with them..one of my cousin's even bought a condo for her mum and has now moved on with her after her mum in law died, bought a condo for her husband's dad in the same development (will make looking after both of them easier).

My dad kept my grandma at home for as long as he could even though she was bed bound and was wearing nappies. They had to hand her over to the care home when he and the helper both got dengue fever & could no longer care for her anymore (also at that time there was covid and it was thought that in my home country, the elderly were safer in the care homes with their vigorous safety controls rather than in the community particularly since my sister is a doctor and getting exposed on a daily basis). He previously swore to me that she would NEVER go to a care home but sadly life doesn't always work out that way. British people don't make such pledges,. I think.

And in my home country, average lifespan is longer than in the UK. I think it's the mindset. In the UK, caring for parents is not seen as a child's responsibility. In Asian societies, it's seen as a child's responsibility by default and yes there may be many reasons why the child may fall short. But this mindset means that there isn't a collective expectation for the state to rush to the rescue. The state is expected to help but the family are definitely expected to play a role.

I live in the UK now but I have noticed many people who are 20 years older and have kids and properties in the UK do go home permanently and a commonly cited reason is elderly parents...

The other problem is that "taking care of the in-laws" is seen as the daughter-in-law's responsibility in many of these cultures, and it puts women off marriage, once a society has started to develop past the point where women absolutely have to get married in order to be considered respectable.

In India, norms around marrying young and almost universally are still so entrenched that this isn't a problem.... yet.

But in places like Taiwan and South Korea, "I don't want to be stuck with the wife-work of taking care of the in-laws" is becoming a significant reason for the falling popularity of marriage. Middle income countries like Thailand are also moving rapidly in this direction.

Honestly, it is a very hard-to-solve problem.

...and I should have added, less marriage means fewer babies in most Asian countries, because of conservative taboos against out of wedlock births. The cratering birthrate then compounds the aging-society problem, long-term, making elder care dilemmas even more acute.

Expecting families to do all the elder care also mean you'll have huge numbers of women dropping out of the workforce, reducing tax revenues.

Honestly, I think it is society' interest to have eldercare services; at the risk of sounding a bit brutal, it's a more efficient way of doing it, rather than expecting every middle aged woman to give up her job and do it on a 1-1 basis, and also acting surprising when huge numbers of women, offered this vision, start deciding they don't want to marry at all!

It's not about "lovely traditional responsible cultures versus feckless Westerners who can't be bothered."

I didn't say it was, yet the fact remains that we rely far far more on the state than other places.

So an NHS that before the strikes, does not attend category 2 calls i.e Heart Attacks and Strokes is a "National Health Service" ?

And when you get to AE, you'll wait and wait and wait, many die, approx 200 a week.

But all good in Tory land, where the idiots (Barclay and Sunak) will attack the health workers and ensure that many more leave/don't go into the profession.

A lot of the NHS is already private.

Our local hospital has declared a critical incident. No beds available and exceptionally long waits in a&e. Seeing as they didn’t declare one last week when there were no beds and 48 hour waits in a&e I dread to think how bad it is now.