Horror I witnessed last night NHS

[ElisabethZott]

At 3pm yesterday I took my 88 yr old mum to hospital as she had an unexpected, sudden anaphylactic reaction to one of her meds and her tongue and throat swelled up to the extent she was struggling to breathe/talk/ swallow. I drove her there because I knew the ambulance wait can be hours.
I witnessed pure absolute carnage. I worked for the wonderful NHS for 30 years and yesterday I had first hand experience of the struggles the poor staff. I have never seen such a horrendous sight of so many trollies with extremely sick and dying patients lining the corridors. I couldn’t begin to count them but there were dozens and dozens. It’s only early November, I can only say, for your own sakes, unless you have a life threatening condition, do not go to A&E.
The staff were absolutely brilliant but there’s not enough of them. The care and kindness they showed us amazing. DM didn’t join the trolley queue as her airways were compromised so we went to the observation ward where she has stayed on a trolly overnight. All A&E wards were rammed to capacity with people not even having their own bay, they were just squeezed into any available space.
Once mum had steroids and anti histamines and she stabilised ( because they were working at full speed to treat other patients) the staff simply didn’t have to time or capacity to help mum. She was offered no water, no blankets no food ( her tongue swelling had gone down a little and she hadn’t eaten all day ). You can see by the tone of my post I am no way being critical of the fantastic medical team , they were pushed to the limits. I don’t really know the point of this thread except to say I am so worried what’s going to happen when winter starts properly.

Thank you NHS but you too need looking after too because you are really broken and sick

It’s hard to change

I recall Theresa May trying to tackle social care with some kind of tax but had to u turn

Presumably the push back from media and people to their MPs got too big

If something like, we pay a minimal charge as other countries do, was proposed I’m not sure the party proposing it would get the votes.

Pp have said Cons won’t touch the old as their voters, but equally policies floated from Labour really are light and ideological and not about the old either

I suppose the hard part is floating something and then actually getting the votes to implement

I’m sure it is luck of the draw.

Our family has troubled the NHS in two regions a lot this year and it’s always been absolutely fine. We’ve had a couple of ambulances (unrelated incidents), a stroke, a heart condition and asthma admissions between us along with copious outpatient appointments.

There’s only been one long wait and that is for a cardiologist outpatient appointment that is still outstanding. The A&E’s were good, DD was in and out with a chest xray for an infection in under 3hrs.

The NHS is on its knees in some areas but it isn’t universal. That’s one of the issues-it’s so inconsistent and no political party will fix it. Medicine is too advanced for the NHS model now. Change is needed but no-one has the stomach for it.

It would have to be Labour. People instinctively don't trust the Tories on health in much the same way that voters still trust Tories more on law and order.

I would like to see Labour propose a new model of state backed European style health care rather than continue to tinker with a failing model designed for the needs of 70 years ago and bastardised even then. At the very least it raises awareness of the costs of health care.

Whether they are willing to bite the bullet and accept publicly that throwing money at it just masks the underlying problems rather than fixing them is a question they need to answer before the next election.

Regarding the space taken up by drunks and drink related accidents, it was the same when I worked in critical care 25 yrs ago. At any one time around 50 to 80% of bed space taken up by this.

Yes - are the drinking casualties any higher than they were 20 years ago? I'm given to believe that young people are drinking less, and certainly bingeing less. But maybe that's just my personal sample!

Happy to be corrected on the details.

the point stands though. Older people are a large group and they are not all the same.

10-20% at the bottom are pretty low income.

but higher up there are a lot of affluent people.

some just living a comfortable life, own their own modest home, decent pension.

Some especially in the south east very affluent. millions in property large family sized own homes, second homes, lots of boomers are buy to let landlords. But pensions and investments.

and YES I’m saying those second two groups need to pay in more.

as a group the boomer generation is both asset and income rich. The only way to get more funding for better services is to tax there more.

political cowardice and shirt termism and refusal to work across party (which was the idea of Dilnot I thunk
ut then the Tories chickened out).

a wealth tax which includes the value of the home you own is completely standard in some countries eg France. You have to factor in weather you can afford to pay it into whether you keep your home.

it could be a low percentage of value every year, or reforming stamp duty (which is move to a sellers not a buyers tax so at the point of change so those owning now would get taxed again on the asset they have). So older people or probate sales selling family sized houses would pay more tax on property than working families trying to trade up to get the space they need. Or a combination.

id tax final salary pensions and other assets and investments more too.

you’d have to offer changes here as part of a package of better care and support.

the Dilnot cap was aimed at enabling people to keep their homes. But that favours the wealthy. Everyone pays in £80k of costs and keep the rest (those details aren’t right) means a on one with a low value home pays in nearly everything while someone in a £1-2 million home in the south east gets to keep that and pass it on to their children.

which is really unfair.

and lastly YES the right wing press have a lot of answer for here.

they go bonkers when any of this is suggested. And rev people up to oppose it while ignoring how that feeds the problems we have.

the ONLY group that serves is affluent pensioners and those that will inherit from them. As they can afford good quality private care, and get to keep their assets to pass on their adult children.

it sort of serves the middle group too. But enables them to keep their assets in return for shitty care.

but lots of us don’t want to face the reality of old age - there was a thread on here the other week asking about the pitfalls of retiring early. When I pointed out the risk is not having enough money it got shouted down as ‘life is for living’ and ‘not worth worry about something that might happen’

yet most people in their 50s and 60s will need health and social care for a good few years at the end of their life.

but it’s scary and depressing so collectively we put our head in the sand and hope it won’t happen to us.

and when it does it’s too late.

the point stands though. Older people are a large group and they are not all the same.

10-20% at the bottom are pretty low income.

but higher up there are a lot of affluent people.

some just living a comfortable life, own their own modest home, decent pension.

Some especially in the south east very affluent. millions in property large family sized own homes, second homes, lots of boomers are buy to let landlords. But pensions and investments.

and YES I’m saying those second two groups need to pay in more.

Are you saying those 'just living a comfortable life' should be paying more? As an example that group would include DH (I'm not a pensioner). He has a state pension and one private one that doesn't pay out a huge amount but enough to keep him comfortable. We own our own home, a one bedroom flat, so we can hardly be called 'affluent'.

@C8H10N4O2 I don't understand the fascination with a European insurance based model (and many countries don't use this model in any case)

How would it get us up to the levels of buildings, equipment and staff that say France or Germany has? Two countries often quoted.

Where would the staff come from? we can't even get enough staff as it is, whether home or from abroad.

(This is one issue i have with Labours plans too)

*ElisabethZott · Yesterday 10:50

@Fizzadora just answering your post about “half the people probably didn’t need to be there” - yesterday afternoon that simply wasn’t true, people that I saw queueing on trollies were extremely sick. Saturday night I saw one drum person and she was arrested because she was being abusive and kicking the staff*

I would say it is more than half

I had to literally carry dh into A&E after his multiple visits to his GP over a period of 6 months

He had asked his GP if he had Bowel Cancer as it is in his family and was told that he shouldn’t look at Dr Google (He had witnessed his dad die of bowel cancer so knew the symptoms) I think he was so scared of it being cancer he accepted what his GP was telling him until he woke up one morning and could barely walk and looked like he had lost 5 stone over night.

Instead of his GP sending him for tests and getting the issue sorted at the beginning which would have involved in total maybe 3/4 drs/surgeons appointments, 1 visit to have all bloods done, 1 visit for a colonoscopy and simple surgery with an overnight stay and some chemo.
They put it off and put it off because the alternative was spending money on the above
Instead He had 30+ drs appointments before his visit to A&E where he was diagnosed with cancer stage 4, Blood tests and 9 months in hospital.

That is where the NHS wastes its money.

There was no need for what happened

Well the NHS will be losing the tax paid from @MyGrannysBucket daughters job unless the surgery pulls their finger out

Modern European style state backed insurance has avoided the NHS model for a reason - they provide better health care, more efficiently and effectively for most conditions. Free at the point of access is meaningless when the access isn't there or is rationed out of existence

Exactly this.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

Are you saying those 'just living a comfortable life' should be paying more? As an example that group would include DH (I'm not a pensioner). He has a state pension and one private one that doesn't pay out a huge amount but enough to keep him comfortable. We own our own home, a one bedroom flat, so we can hardly be called 'affluent'.

perhaps a little yes. And the people just above that.

like income taxes, aiming for a sliding scale where those with more pay proportionally more.

but the reality is there are many more people in the middle so taking a bit more off each of them raises the most money.

would you pay a little more tax as a household (and maybe it’s a tax on the value of your protest after you die) and in return get much better health and social care?

same as how, as a group mid earners on say £25-£55k generate the most tax revenue as there is just so many of them.

there aren’t there many higher rate tax payers proportionally - for workers only 10% earn more than £59k a year.

but 75% of the over 65s own their own homes outright (mortgage paid off). While the numbers of working age people able to buy (with a mortgage) falls and falls.

Eg I met a London taxi driver a while ago who had a generous final salary pension. He was saying he used to have to be careful not to earn too much as a cabby as he took early retirement and he’d have to pay more tax. Owned a four bed house in the south east out right. He’s probably a paper millionaire?

lots and lots of those kind of households, who are a bit better off than you. But don’t consider themselves rich rich.

they need to pay in more so you and your husband get better care.

various ways to do that, slightly increasing the income tax they pay, low annual tax on assets like property (eg 1% of value so on £1million house that’s £10k a year) bigger taxes on property when sold and / or increasing inheritance tax.

from what you describe you’d only pay a little more. Everyone above you would pay a bit more rising proportionally to their wealth.

THe NHS is like a landlord who won’t spend any money on maintaining his properties

They won’t spend a £500 to get scaffolding to fix back in place one roof tile whilst tenants are renting the property.
Instead they will leave it and leave it. The tenants complain of the leaky roof and then move out.
Then they decide to fix the problem as they can’t rent the place out.
Except the damage done by not fixing that one tile for £300 is now going to cost them close to £30,000 as they now need new timbers, a new roof, a new ceiling plasters, painters and electricians etc and they are losing the rental income with no tenant wanting to live in a house with a leaky roof.

No amount of money will be enough for the NHS if they don’t change their out look and look at spending money when people first go to their GPs instead of GPs putting patients off over and over and limiting appointments to one symptom at a time.

Remember an imminent heart attack can have 3 symptoms that individually wouldn’t mean you were having a heart attack.

No good a GP only wanting to hear one symptom and you say indigestion and then the GP gives you a prescription for Antacids and tells you to come back in a couple of weeks if there is no change

Many countries in Europe don't use state backed insurance systems.

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/why-has-the-nhs-not-been-copied-spoiler-it-has#:~:text=Italy%2C%20Spain%20and%20Portugal%20have,political%20climates%20and%20recent%20history.

But what all European countries have done is funded their health systems consistently higher over the last 50 or 60 years than the UK has

@Fernsfernsferns all good points, but there are so many variables!

Maybe if I knew it would be ring fenced for health and social care and not wasted in the usual way I would be more open to paying slightly more tax.

We own our own home after paying off the mortgage with an inheritance. That's after years of an interest only mortgage because DH was made redundant and earned far less than he did before. We couldn't exactly downsize I don't feel guilty at all about not having a mortgage. At the end of the day it's still a one bed flat that's unsellable due to a short lease that we can't afford to extend.

I live in the South East and a four bed house might be worth a million but it's not exactly a mansion, DM's 2 bed semi sold for nearly £400K 6 years ago and another 2 bed sold for half a million this year.

There would have to be a realistic starting point for a property tax. For example with a decent lease our flat would be worth around £250-£300K (property prices from Rightmove over the last year). I don't have a spare £2K-£3K on top of the same again in council tax for next to nothing. Putting bigger taxes on properties when they are sold might prevent a lot of people moving. I think it would also need to be waived if a house was being sold because someone was moving into a care home as they would need all the money they could get. Increasing inheritance tax is OK providing it doesn't affect the remaining spouse and no tax

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

yes so what if new taxes were rolled in with a new deal on social care that reduced costs individuals have to pay AND increases the quality of it?

i gather in Germany taking out ‘social care’ insurance is compulsory. So it mutualises the cost (as some people die earlier and / or are lucky enough to have good health and then die with little need for care.

so it mutualises the risk. The insurance then pays the care costs for those that need it.

and yes maybe property taxes only apply to those with £500k or more? Or are 0.5% for those under that.

etc

if I think about the adults I know in the over 70s age group (parents, relatives, their friends) I reckon most of them have total assets of £500k - £3 million each AND good pensions.

Retired middle classes in the south east.

they should all be paying more into the system.

and I say that as someone who will inherit a decent amount if nothing changes.

@Fernsfernsferns I don't like the term "boomers" and it devalues the rest of your posts. However I do take your point about there being a large cohort of comfortably off older people due to final salary pensions. Also in the South East, valuable properties. Younger generations unlikely to match it. I think having a higher tax rate for one section of the population would be undoable. However the idea of social care insurance could work if it was seen to be fair.

Fair enough. It’s an abbreviation of baby boomers which is the term for that generation vis gen Xers or millennials etc.

it’s become a bit pejorative I guess which is a shame.

And it wouldn’t be new taxes for one segment of the population. It would be new taxes that speak to the demographics of the current times.

The current system was built on a mostly working age population supporting a much smaller number of pensioners (see upthread there used to be 30 workers to every retired person).

when the state pension was introduced most people died within a decade of retirement. Now most people live another 20-30 years. That’s a big success but clearly as system designed for the former cannot support the latter.

And property prices have leapt up and that climb is a windfall not a result of hard work. Paying off the mortgage is the hard work bit. If it’s worth double or triple or four times what you paid for it, that’s luck.

we need to bring in new taxes that reflect these new realities.

If you earn enough or have enough to have to pay them that’s actually a sign of your success.

(and as I said before there needs to be other reforms too, not just new taxes , later retirement, and / or a period of active retirement where perhaps you get incentives vs the new taxes if eg you volunteer, as well as reforming how we deliver health care and social care, and realistically welcoming more immigrants to do the work as much as that is unpopular .)

the fact that we HAVENT brought in these kind of reforms is the reason everything is a mess now.

there’s no quick fix.

but there are solutions, as long as we all face up to the need for serious and systemic changes.

if I think about the adults I know in the over 70s age group (parents, relatives, their friends) I reckon most of them have total assets of £500k - £3 million each AND good pensions.

Wow, people must share a lot of information with you. I wouldn't have a clue about the value of peoples' pensions!

Public services unfortunately have been run down to nothing. It is the same in education. It's utterly horrific and thoroughly immoral. Our county has been run for too long by people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the majority of people's lives.

Which would be almost impossible with the current government who do nothing unless they can see an immediate profit in it for themselves for their disgusting cronies.

Those of you going on about Scotland and Wales being just as bad are completely missing the point. The Welsh and Scottish governments have some agency over how the money allocated to them via the (woefully inadequate) Barnett formula but the purse strings are still very much controlled by the Tory Westminster government.

The Welsh and Scottish governments can't spend money they haven't been allocated (thanks to 13 years of Austerity and budget cuts)

I’ve worked in the NHS off and on since 2005, under both Labour and Conservative governments. It is not a problem which will be solved by throwing more money at it. From what I observe, a lot of the problems lie in the management. I know I will get kicked for this, but so much of management are nurses who have been promoted way beyond their training or skill set. Being a superb nurse does not mean that you are instantly able to make sound financial judgements using millions of taxpayers’ money, implement change processes, innovations and improvements, and able to justify sometimes very difficult decisions to your board. We also need to remember that the NHS is not, and has never been, one entity, but rather a collection of hundreds of acute and mental health trusts, primary care providers and commissioning boards existing largely in isolation from one another. GPs and dentists aren’t even technically part of the NHS but are contractors providing NHS services. The NHS needs more joined up thinking and a professional managerial class to come in and make decisions based on hard financial facts as well as compassion. Oh, and “winter pressures” has happened every year since I’ve worked in the NHS and yet still seems to take the commissioners and management by surprise on an annual basis.

Don't want to make this political but I absolutely believe this is down to the Tories. I've worked in the public sector under labour and yes they're all as bad as each other in many ways but the absolute destruction of public services was never more pronounced until the Tories came into power. I also appreciate just throwing money doesn't solve problems. The latest news story I read was our wonderful have me secretary saying they need to clamp down on homeless people using tents! We need an election with absolute urgency

It's terrifying in hospital. I have serious health issues and have severe trauma from being in there and what I have seen and experienced

Im a boomer but no final salary schemeve one pension from one company that is but only worked there for 3 years so £9 per week. Final salary schemes were mostly paid to those in well paid stable jobs, ie jobs for life, eg banks, insurance companies and perhaps civil servants. Most also were of an earlier cohort born in the 1930s and 40s. My mother in law being an example who worked the last 30 years as a civil servant on a very low wage. Today her state pension (the old one not the higher paid new one) is topped up with around £4000 per year from her civil service pension, ie a grand total of around £12kpa. Her flat is valued at around £70k and has a mortgage on it of £40k thanks to having to bail out one of her other children from a very bad situation. More fit into this category than what far too many people choose to believe. Perhaps their parent are super rich with such massive pensions and assets.