Will the NHS recover? What happens if not?

[ilovemykids1]

As somebody with extreme health anxiety, seeing the collapse of the NHS is horrible and I get so scared of what's going to happen.

Do you think it can ever recover? How many years would this take? And if not, what would happen instead!?

It’s both

Taxes don’t just contribute to the NHS though, they contribute to social security for example. I do begrudge paying tax (DH is a higher rate payer) however I wouldn’t want to see a system like the US where there is no safety net like there is here as no one knows whats around the corner.

Right, but it still isn’t free.

There is a middle ground. Not USA model as the scaremongers like to spout. The European model is worth exploring. We quite honestly cannot continue like this.

Will Elon musk try and stop the NHS from collapsing?

I think more people need to think about buying a cheap collapsible wheelchair if they have a car and can get an ill person to A&E themselves using that. Even so, our hospital car parking in this country is often absolutely CRAP with car parks a good 15 mins walk away from A&E. Signs everywhere in front of A&E tell you there's no parking there and it's only for ambulances, so what are people supposed to do if it's just you the driver, and the ill person and you've got to drive them there with no-one else available to a) check on them in the car on the way there and b) nowhere close to leave the car and there is no-one else outside A&E to hand them to while you go and park the car.

I've had some late night/middle of the night drives to A&E myself - it's bad enough when you have a second person with you to be with the ill person who is by now rolling around in pain or fainting from it, or whom you're worried is going to collapse and be unrevivable. But when it's just you driving, with a car to dump somewhere, and the ill person may well not be able to get themselves out of the car easily, it's very hard. Even if you dump the car in front of A&E, you know it's going to be a long time before your ill person is even triaged and you don't want to leave them on their own in the waiting room to move the car if they are elderly or fainting from pain.

The design of newer hospitals in city centres is far from perfect for cars coming to A&E.

But I agree on the whole. I reluctantly called an ambulance for a friend who was staying with me many years ago. She was able to walk, she just had terrible stomach pain and felt rubbish. I told her I was able to drive her to the hospital but she insisted that we call an ambulance to the house despite me trying to tell her that it would be quicker to drive and the hospital was only a 15 min drive away. But she wouldn't listen to me. So I made an embarrassed call to ask for an ambulance, then we had to wait for it, for something that clearly wasn't an emergency. They ended up taking her in as they couldn't be sure what was causing the pain without a scan, and I drove after the ambulance anyway (when we could have gone together an hour earlier). She still wasn't seen any sooner than had we gone in the car.

Some people just have a ridiculous sense of what an emergency is, until they've actually been in a proper one.

It’s free at the point of use.

‘I think more people need to think about buying a cheap collapsible wheelchair if they have a car and can get an ill person to A&E themselves using that’

I’m a physio - DM is 90 and getting quite unsteady on her feet. I’m paranoid that she’s going to fall and fracture her hip so i’ve genuinely done this… and keep a select few consultant orthopaedic colleagues’ phone numbers saved in my contacts in hope that they’d be able to fit her in at our private hospital. One of our consultants ended up having to do the same with his father after a fall. The NHS ambulance was going to take upwards of 8 hours to come, then god knows how long he would’ve had to languish in an A&E corridor for. It’s a sign of the times!

No shit. But free at point of care is not the same thing as free.

your original post claimed my delivery was ‘free’ in the uk but it isn’t - I am paying for it via higher levels of taxation. The fact that tax also goes towards other things as well doesn’t make it any less true that having the nhs in its current form requires a higher levels of taxation than would be the case in another funding model.

At least when I lived in the US, Switzerland and EU and paid insurance premiums I knew I could rely on access to high quality healthcare when I needed it. In the UK I pay higher levels of taxation AND private insurance premiums but still don’t find I can reliably get the care I need through a combination of NHS failure and gaps in the private market.

You were complaining that the maternity care you received was shight (I can’t say I’d disagree with you) but my point is that it’s there and available for anyone to use when they need it regardless of finances. It’s not always as bad as what it was like for you, though it shouldn’t be hit and miss like that.

The whole thing needs overhauling and I’d happily pay more in NI to secure better services but there would be uproar.

We accept that care is ‘shight’ because we think of it as free. It feels free, but over our lifetimes we are spending quite a bit for a service that isn’t reliably available and often poor quality.

when people feel like they are paying for something they value it more and have higher expectations. ‘Free at point of care’ is a lovely ideal, but in addition to being unsustainable as the definition of ‘care’ expands beyond basic lifesaving treatment, it also fosters poor behaviour from users who underestimate the value of services and face no penalty for using more than they need. No amount of extra NI is enough to fund a service level equal to what I had in the US or EU because the better it got the more people would use it.

we are moving to greater privatisation whether we want to or not - the worse the nhs gets the greater demand for private alternatives. If we simply carry on as we are we will end up with something more extreme than the US market in terms of bifurcation. Or we can let go of the ideals and end up with something a bit more like in the EU which better balances private and public interests. Not sure Labour has the balls for the kind of big thinking required, though.

It’s the worst of both worlds. We are high rate tax payers. See private GPs and any procedures/operations we pay for in cash at a private hospital. But when we have an accident or emergency the only option is an NHS hospital.

The State...............look after your health. Dont smoke or drink and keep your weight down.
Also the State............run yourself ragged caring for elderly relatives.

"There is a middle ground. Not USA model as the scaremongers like to spout. The European model is worth exploring. We quite honestly cannot continue like this"

Having lived in the UK for years presumably and having seen how privatisation, water electric markets have been implemented here, vested interest indulged etc, I suspect the former is what we will get landed with - so we could end up paying hundreds for every insulin doses etc.

Worst thing about this is just like the aforementioned industries it will be foreign owned companies profiting....

Yep.

Foreign companies - even worse Foreign government owned companies cashing in on the NHS is certainly a fear.

The railways are a prime example of that, the Dutch rail companies were running and profiting from loads of British rail lines but not reinvesting into it.

Power stations is another, the French have big hands in the UKs new nuclear power stations

The charges are higher than I expected in Australia. What happens if you have v serious treatment or long term treatment, Is there a cap on what you have to pay?

And a relatively high proportion of working age people not working https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68534537

I agree we view it as shight because it’s free in the same way gets abused because it’s free. If we all had to pay £15 to see a GP the push back wouldn’t be worth the suggestion. I bet if there was a fee, people would think twice before making a GP appointment.

That leads me on to my second point, people will actively go to the GP for creams, lotions, potions they could get from the pharmacy- but of course they’ll then have to buy them so it’s easier to go to the GP to get it ‘free’. A member of my family told me once, not to buy something from that pharmacy and advised me to go to my GP and it will be free for my child - all I wanted was some paracetamol….

There are so many ways the NHS is haemorrhaging money, therefore so many ways to make changes. The amount of money wasted on the ‘middle man’ is astronomical. Take for example agency staff, there is an assumption that NHS can’t get the staff and there aren’t enough nurses/HCA etc, so management have to reach out and outsource work via agency’s - The middle man. That shows there are staff availability but they know they can get paid significantly more via the agency so o don’t blame them. They should all be on a better wage in order to retain and recruit staff.

I used to work for a company that used to do work on behalf of the councils. For the same job as someone employed directly by the council, I was get paid more. So another example of how taxes are wasted on the middle man.

I’ve paid privately for my children to be seen by a consultant, because I didn’t want to wait 6 months.

I agree with you labour won’t have the balls to do it and make changes, they’ll just check more money at it this more money will get wasted… I don’t even think the tories would chance it, purely because of the public backlash. I’ll go back to my original idea of a fee to see a GP, but again, it won’t happen because people why moan about it…

Fee to see a gp won’t work because over half would be exempt due to being pensioners, children or otherwise on benefits etc. It’d be just yet another tax on workers who are the ones less likely to need gp appointments!

This is the backlash already though (not by you directly, I know you’re just pointing it out the implications)

It’s like free school meals, not everyone on benefits is exempt. The threshold is pretty low to be entitled to help and for the cost of uniforms etc..

I don’t necessarily think people over 65 should be except either. It looks like free prescriptions for the over 60’s or 65’s whatever it is, is currently being looked at so I would say that age will be upped in the not so distant future

Yep.

The people I know on benefits are at the GP's almost daily for their various complaints and freebie prescriptions for mainly over the counter drugs.

People in work generally are more robust. As always, the working classes will suffer.

What’s the alternative though? There will always be those that will never have to pay for anything.

Surely the rest of us paying a small fee if we need to see the GP, is worth it knowing that the extra income generated would be used so that if we needed an emergency admission to A&E it would be guaranteed. At the moment it’s hit or miss if our loved ones will even get seen now…

I doubt all pensioners would be free anyway if we had to pay a small fee, apart from those on pension credits, like the WFA.

yeh there is a thing called Medicare safety net, when you have over a certain amount out of pocket your rebate increases. It’s a yearly thing.