If the tories lose the next election, will the NHS be safe?

[YearOfTheRear]

Just that, really... I feel so worried for my young family at the moment. The state of healthcare in this country is getting quite frightening. Will we actually be able to sleep reasonably soundly if the conservatives don't get back in?

Yes, because he’s 19.

We definitely won’t be able to sleep soundly if the conservatives do get back in.

If they do get in it may be with a tiny majority or hung parliament, so probably not the kind of mandate you'd need for this kind of upheaval.

I think when we hear private healthcare, we think of the insane system in the US but other EU countries have systems that combine state and insurance and seem to work ok.

TBH I think we need much more onus on healthy lifestyle, obesity reduction and encouraging older people to age well through diet, exercise and staying active. As well as an honest discussion about end of life and whether it's always the right thing to keep people hanging on with dementia or horrible life limiting conditions where they're basically sitting in a home with no quality of life, wanting to die but being kept alive by a lot of expensive care.

I've had experience of hospitals in PICU, children's ward and outpatients this year - all very anxious stuff but made much worse by short staffing and having to badger people to find out what was going on, ensure tests were done etc. If paying a bit of money made that better, I don't think I'd object at this point. People on low incomes are already often being shafted if they lack the advocacy skills to get doctors and nurses to pay attention. Shouldn't be that way, but it is.

TBH I think we need much more onus on healthy lifestyle, obesity reduction and encouraging older people to age well through diet, exercise and staying active.

I used to eat healthily, got lots of exercise and all the rest of it. Still ended up with Crohn’s anyway. There’s a whole huge list of serious illnesses that can’t be avoided by just eating more healthily, and anyway, a lot of medical conditions are hereditary, including some types of cancers.

I’m fed up with all the ableism that goes with these types of discussions. Healthy lifestyle doesn’t protect you from most serious conditions.

The problem is that governments find it hard to get outcomes on things like healthy eating. We know that poor oral health is a massive risk, and an indicator for other health issjes

Take the current policy suggestion re promoting oral health in schools, that will take years before we can tell if it works or to have a positive effect when they are adults

In that time governments will have changed repeatedly and there's a chance that it's scrapped anyway

It will be helpful in 20 years to dentistry but not in the short term which is what the 4 year political cycle is focused on,

To answer the Ops question that wouldn't have an impact by the next government cycle

What do you mean by "safe"? I would hope that even if Labour win, they start to show some common sense and finally take action to move us to an insurance-based system. Just giving more money is pointless - like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
The current NHS model is inefficient, wasteful and unsustainable so there MUST be significant change. It is nothing to do with party politics.

So if we can’t prevent everything, what’s the point in trying at all? That makes no sense whatsoever. I have no idea what the numbers would be, but I can imagine that the NHS would save stacks of money if just 10% of type 2 diabetes cases were prevented. And that’s just one condition of many…

Community dentistry made a massive impact on child oral health in the 70s and 80s. Regular visits to schools by community dentists identified children at risk and alerted parents to potential disease. But the service was massively downscaled during the 90s and 00s to provide a referral service for extractions under GA and sedation. A basic service for disabled and a few elderly.
The community service is pretty much invisible now. Our local emergency access clinics locally have quietly disappeared and 111 is contracted to a select group of dental practices that hold NHS contracts. Access to this provision is only available via 111.
Even if all adult dentistry goes private there should be sufficient residual NHS budget to redevelop the community service. Dental practices are generally well run businesses that don’t lose money hand over fist. Maybe community contracts could be provided for child only dentistry to existing practices. It would cost far less than rebooting the system. But then that’s far too sensible.

No. No amount of money is ever enough, the amount that is wasted by the NHS is phenomenal (and mostly nothing to do with the government).

For a start, all unessential jobs need to go and partner/resource management needs a full review. Whoever wins the next election won't do this though - it would require even more money!!!

This.

It'll be safer with Labour than the Tories, for sure.

Yep, sometimes nature is a bitch, I'm sorry you have such a horrible illness. Even with the best diet and lifestyle in the world, some people still get sick.

However the overall prevalence of disease would definitely reduce if more people ate healthily and exercised, followed other good lifestyle practices.

Not just to reduce cost but to ensure people have a happier old age - a good diet and being active gives you more energy and helps prevent frailty.

You can't really be saying that nothing can be done to prevent any disease.

No, it’s more about the attitude rather than anything else. If I could have a tenner for every person who’s ever said, well all you need to do is just eat healthily and do yoga then you won’t get ill in the first place, I would be very rich indeed. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reduce type 2 diabetes, but it does mean that people need to think about the impact of their words on people with other, non-avoidable medical conditions. It’s very, very upsetting for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities to read this stuff day in, day out, because we somehow don’t count, and get blamed for being ill.

This is a piss take or a typo, yes?

If not, you do realise that it’s the tories that have run it into the ground?

Type 2 diabetes has a strong genetic cause as well as environmental. Some patients will respond to lifestyle changes but there are a hard core that don’t fit what we consider the classic type 2 diabetic presentation.
One of our medical questionnaire questions is whether you have type 2 diabetes in the family, if one of your parents or siblings has diabetes then this increases your chance regardless.
Unfortunately, it is associated with heart disease and gum disease, but not necessarily obesity as well.
Developing gum disease in middle age is frequently coupled with the onset of type 2 diabetes and if you’re really unlucky coronary heart disease.
There are evolutionary advantages to being able to gain fat in temperate climates. You’re more likely to survive the cold winters but at the expense of a grand old age. Mother Nature is a bitch.
The incidence of diabetes is much higher in Asian communities.

Well we shall still have an NHS that is failing far too many patients

it needs to change we need to look at France/Germany who both provide far superior services

it will cost us more

Yes, raising our health service to the level of France or Germany would cost a lot more than we currently pay, regardless of whether we fund this through taxation, an insurance system or a combination of both.

The NHS needs reform. I trust Labour to reform it fairly far more than I would trust the Tories.

One thing that has held back reform has been the perception that all privatisation is equal and that privatisation means services will no longer be free at the point of use. I’d support a move to a system more like that in France or Belgium.

Like it is in Wales, under Labour? 😂

He’s just spent the non dom tax status abolishment money again.

The never ending non funding

Wales is a pretty good example of a Labour run NHS.

The Welsh government has been Labour for 20+ years.

As a devolved administration, they receive proportionately the same funding as England have allocated to health services. It is then entirely up to them how they spend it, and indeed whether they even spend it all on health at all.

After 20 years of making their own funding decisions with the same allocated budget, Wales now has more than 27,000 people waiting over 2 years for treatment. The whole of England has just 277 in this category.

On average across all waiting lists, patients wait 5 weeks longer for treatment in Wales than they do in England.

AND……the real kicker……in 2021, the Welsh government returned £155 million of their allocated funds back to Westminster because they hadn’t managed to spend it within the allocated tax year.

So please no nonsense comments about fairness of the overall budget levels allocated to Wales.

The NHS is fucked whoever gets in. It's so far gone that it isn't salvageable.

The NHS needs completely removing from politics anyway. It's disgusting that healthcare is a right/left issue.

Nope, it's a matter of when, not if, the NHS dies, regardless of whoever is in power.

This national obsession/religion of the NHS is exactly what will cause it's demise. It's simply not sustainable in it's present form, and we can't keep chucking more and more billions into the leaky bucket.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised that Labour are starting to shift their position and starting to mention changes to it. Previously, their answer was always to shovel more cash in!

If we could have a national debate about it's future, without the usual political point scoring, we'd actually have a chance of saving it in some form, but as long as it's a sacred cow, it won't survive.

The inefficiency and waste is truly awful to see. My OH has, literally, thousands of pounds of expensive cancer drugs in his cupboard. One is over a hundred pounds per tablet and another (that he takes weekly is a thousand pounds per tablet)! The oncologist keeps prescribing the full standard prescription every month, but that same oncologist knows he only takes the daily one every other day, instead of every day, so he gets 21 each month, but only takes 11 or 12 (3 week treatment course, week four is week off), and instead of 3 of the ultra expensive one, he only takes 2. He's brought this up many times with the oncologist (monthly phone consultations), but he's told it's "too hard" to change the prescription as any change needs to go through some kind of committee for approval with the treatment course being so expensive. It's absolutely crazy. Pharmacy won't take any back as they say they'd have to destroy anyway once it's prescribed, even if it doesn't leave the pharmacy. Literally no one cares about wasted money!

I wish they could get rid of the political dogma around private healthcare. If the NHS were allowed to provide private services, they could make profits which could be used to subsidise and finance free services. Because of the politics, they can't do that, so people with money go to the private sector and line the pockets of private businesses.

Take hearing aids - NHS ones are, lets be blunt, pretty crap. I've had two sets over the years, and neither were any good - they were cheap and nasty. So, I ended up paying £2.5k for private ones which are exceptional, but several hundred pounds of that will be profit for the private audiologist. Why can't the NHS offer "co pay" alternatives, i.e. offer the £2.5k ones at, say, £2k, and still make a small profit - or charge the £2.5k less what it would cost the NHS for the bog standard NHS ones they'd issue otherwise, as, after all, the NHS is saving money when a patient buys private instead!

It's insane that the problems of the NHS are driving people to go private, thus pushing money into the pockets of private providers, when the same patients could be putting money into the NHS coffers if the NHS could rid itself of the shackles of political dogma.

It's typical leftie policies stopping it happening. They want equality for all, they don't want anyone having a better service, so they want everyone to enjoy the same, even if that means everyone suffering a crap service, just because they don't want some people having a better one! It's the race to the bottom in action, just like education!