Catastrophic state of the ambulance service: what's behind it?

[tulips27]

Seeing the shocking and upsetting thread where the OP has been waiting for over 24 hours for an ambulance for her relative who has a broken hip I want to ask what has cause this state of affairs? How can this be possible in our country? Can anyone offer any insight?

(Link to the thread for those who have not seen it: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4701431-i-know-iabu-blatantly-using-this-for-traffic-emergency-situation-no-ambulance-still-and-need-advice )

No Dh 550, me 480 approx

800 Euro is about 660 quid.

Just for NI? You're making about 4 x as much as me. (I'm part time).

I hadn't realised my NI bill would be that high if I earned more.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

NI is separate. That’s social tax which is almost 20% of your salary.

The 800 is approx. as it varies depending on how much we earn. If I get a bonus, I pay a lot more that month.

Thats for 2 adults. Our kids are covered under that but it would be the same if we were childless.

Thanks

On that basis, I'd rather go private and pay as and when. Lots of things to think about.

So to sum up. We pay almost 20 percent social tax and almost 15 percent health insurance. Then I come tax. So you’re left with just over 50 percent of your salary.
It’s a great system and it works. But it doesn’t come cheap.

@EmmaAgain22 don’t want to derail the thread but if you are thinking of moving there be careful with private. Once you decide to go private you’re not allowed back into the state system.

Sorry, moving? I'm not moving, just thinking about different models for the NHS.

All roads lead to social care.

The solution is to make social care a better paid and more popular career prospect.

The basic problem for the ambulance service is that A&E is full - they are wasting their time sitting around in ambulances outside A&E waiting to offload their cargo.

So what happens if you lose all your money then get cancer? or run over by a bus?

@DenholmElliot11 that’s the main deterrent. Otherwise people would just opt out when they’re healthy and opt back in when they got sick. I obviously don’t use 800 a month in healthcare. I’m paying for someone who does because one day I might be that person. So if I opt out of the state system, that’s the risk I take.

Plus it’s the law to have some sort of insurance. So if you go for a private plan outside of the system where you just pay a low fee and then a high copay, that will kick in when the bus hits you. Probably not the cancer though.

If I'm run over by a bus, I'm going to assume I'm dead. 😂

I would not like to have treatment for cancer or heart or anything like that. Painkillers and palliative only.

But I do think you can go back to NHS now? A friend was treated privately for cancer through her job health insurance. She has retired so any recurrence, she would be going NHS. She looked at private insurance but after having cancer, the premiums are too high for her.

I'm still not understanding. Are you saying that they'd leave you to die of cancer just because at one time you could afford private healthcare?

Oh, so a lower fee and higher co-pay is also an option? That's good.

But isn’t this how NI works?

The whole nhs is a shit show right now. I'm a specialist wound care podiatrist and currently working 6 days a week to keep waiting lists down. I'm in my 60s and don't know how much longer I can do this. I sleep the whole of Sunday and have no life. I cant see an end to it.

A capitalist system, when health care is run as a business it will.always be about profit, and costs, what we need is a gov't system where their is unlimited funding for staff, hospitals ect bit like the federation from star trek

Dh is a paramedic. It's the tories, the utter scum bags.

Also dh was looking at his work stats last night (it's pie charts / analysis of all sorts such as his long it took for calls to be answered, how quickly ambulances are reaching patients etc) and he said the nhs literally has collapsed. Not nearly or could one day - it already fucking has. There was lots of red on his screen and hardly anyone was reaching their targets. Callers were being unanswered then just hanging up and giving up. It's disgusting what the government has done to this country. My dh works so hard and is not treated fairly at all.

In the UK it is normal for both parents of children to work and the age at which people have children has increased. People - and let's be honest we mean women - are not necessarily available to care for elderly relatives.

The greatest issue in social care is staffing - why clean up shit & piss, have your hair pulled and your tits squeezed for £10 an hour when you can earn more on the tills in Tescos and access other benefits too?

Don't get me wrong - care work can be rewarding to but it's wrong that dedicated, skilled, compassionate people are so poorly paid. And I don't believe it is possible to fix the health service without resourcing social care.

I agree it has collapsed

mum's definition is when there's no hospital to go to! How she can be so cheerful after 2 x 18 hour waits in the last year, I do not know!

The fact is, women used to do care for free. Elderly family members would be looked after by a daughter or daughter-in-law. Now we’re in a situation where families need two salaries to survive, women are working so there’s nobody to look after the elderly. And at the same time there are more elderly than ever due to advances in medicine.

We can’t sustain this situation where everyone works and there’s nobody to care for the elderly. Because it turns out that we can’t actually afford to pay for the work women used to do for free.

Suppose you can afford to do it

part of the problem, understandably, is that people don't want to do it - paid or unpaid.

12 years of Tory government - please remember at the next election and pray it’s not too late!