To think we are all just accepting the state of the NHS?

[MerryMarigold]

I've seen so many threads on AIBU just in the last couple of days where people are just accepting the state of the NHS and finding ways around the lack of funding and scant resources.

I've filled in questionnaires and petitions. I share things on Facebook supporting Doctors/ Nurses and NHS. I vote Labour (whether that really helps I don't know).

I just don't know what else to do. It is ridiculous now and we're all just accepting it. I am dreading my parents old age (they are already past 70).

What can I do? What can we do?

I take it you and cherry are aware that the UK birth rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 since the 1970s
But I wonder how this looks on an area by area basis? I live in an area stuffed to the gunnels with young families and having 3 kids seems to be an increasing trend. And yet none of the services have adjusted to cope with this, not least because the area has changed radically and very quickly in 10 or so years. Far more families as housing costs have risen and squeezed more families into tiny houses they wouldn't have looked twice at a decade or so ago, lots of new flats and houses and so a higher population density, and a lot of families more squeezed financially and using state schools and NHS services whereas in my childhood incomes went further and people in the same jobs would have been able to afford private.
Other areas simply havent had the same experience.

I also wonder how many people who moan about the NHS would actually be happy with increased taxation. I personally know a lot of people who are total hypocrites on this.

lovelearning: Stop the population rising

Shall we go around 'euthanasing' old people then?

I have friends who work for the NHS and it is very sad how underfunded they are.

I don't mind paying more tax.

I pay for prescriptions (often more than the over counter cost!).

These problems have been going on for 40 years?

Well, how come so many cuts have come in the past 5 years or so? This is from friends working in the NHS. Constant CUTS not an inability to keep up with a growing population.

Hef yes to your point about both adults working. Geography too. My granny had her widowed mother living with her in the same village they'd been born in. Her grandparents lived in the same village and they had legions of dc living locally. The men worked and the women did the caring, cooking and cleaning. My granny's dc left the village and all of them worked.

I will back out of the discussion now then, Cherry. I have 3 children, and one of them is disabled, so an even bigger drain on society (although all Childrens services are now owned by Virgincare in our area, so he is draining Richard Branson's pockets really.)

Where does the 'its so hypocritical stand...' end? Do we have to prove how little we sucked the NHS dry, before we are allowed to worry about it and talk about ways we can improve and help it.....'zip it, Hazey, how can you talk about our overstretched system with your 3 kids, disabled offspring and that cancer treatment you had years ago - that cost a pretty penny!'

doing the work that the British are too old and fat to do

Rigghhhttt.....

sleepy
There are areas with lots of kids and areas with few
across the UK - and the latest statistics run to march 2016 - the birth rate is still well below 2.1
and there is no sign at all of it rising above that figure even with recent immigration.

The pressures on the NHS are not caused by young, fit, working immigrants
they are caused by the old
around 80% of A&E admissions are of OAPs

taxes have to rise
its as simple as that

you cannot expect rolls royce service while paying mini bills

Children are not the cause of the rising call on the NHS

Dame Kate Barker says that a rising population is causing strain on services

If we do not curb the rising population, the NHS will fail

Net migration remains at record levels

The situation is awful and air-conditioned don't know what the answer is.

However as awful as the Tory government is, Labour had no answer to the issues when they were in power either.

taxes have to rise
its as simple as that

All taxes? What about those that are already on the breadline?

My experience over the xmas with pneumonia and the NHS has led me to be utterly convinced that the strangling of the NHS is really a way of diverting business to private health insurance.
No GP appointments, Urgent Care looked like a first aid post in a natural disaster zone. I was wheezing but felt certain it was a virus, thought I should leave it another few hours.
My husband has private health insurance with his job and we realised there was urgent care in a nearby hospital. I was admitted with double pnuemonia and spent 3 days on drips and all sorts.
I kknow if I had been in crisis. ie. unconcious, fitting etc, I would have been put at the front of a queue in the NHS meanwhile, trampling across sick babies, old people and so on.
But I felt guilty about being able to access treatment quickly just because we had an added benefit from his work. It seemed so wrong but at the same time I was grateful.
There is a reason why the NHS is collapsing and it is a kick in the teeth to the people who need it, who are seen as a drain on resources and as such should have their health care doled out in as mean spirited a fashion as possible without scaring the horses too much. If a western government with the capacity to buy military equipment but no interest in the physical health of its citizens can exist in the 21st century, then Orwell must be ticking a few boxes off wherever he is.
Did that sentence make any sense?

• and I not air-conditioned

Merry the Conservatives came into power in 2010 and promptly launched an ill starred reform programme. Public spending has been savagely cut. All this is true. However it has exposed the stored up trouble that has been brewing for 40 years. This should have been planned for decades ago.

NHS reform programme I meant to say.

We're starting to see the results of mass migration, it was bound to happen.

Piglet
You can pull faces at my comment, but when the Lincolnshire Jobcentres tried to get Brits to go and pick brassicas they could not find enough young and able bodied folks on the dole to do the work.

Agricultural work is physically exhausting.
The Romanian and Bulgarian lads have - for 70 years - come here for 6 months a year and worked till they can no longer stand, living in shared caravans in fields.
They then go home for several months and recuperate and spend their earnings.
If they do not have "free movement" they will not come and our food prices will go up.

For the last 20 years they have brought their girlfriends and wives - who work as cleaners and cooks and orderlies in care homes up and down the country.

Without them the care home sector would cause even more bed blocking for the NHS than it does already.

Merry I'm not saying that there aren't cuts now- I'm just saying an NHS in crisis isn't something new: people dying in hospital corridors was also a 70s thing. Thinking of it as a problem caused by the Tories is unhelpful, because this masks the true scale - and causes- of the problem. Not least because the Tories are currently spending more on the NHS budget than any previous government. I didn't vote for them, and I'm not a supporter: but the Tories evil bad/Labour good narrative is inaccurate at best and harmful at worst. (See PP)

Piglet
All taxes? What about those that are already on the breadline?
Nobody earning under £11,000 a year pays tax
In fact less than two thirds of the the country pay income tax.

Increasing he basic rate of tax to 23% would provide the funds needed without impacting on the poorest 45% of society

Talkin it was the same before free movement though. Eastern European men used to come in on Fruit Picking visas. Short term visas.

We need to look at the funding of it. It's not doing what was its original mission statement due to the medical advancements. We also need to review giving free prescriptions out

Some really hard decisions have to be taken re the NHS. It can not find everything for everybody.

The population is living longer - and more unhealthily. Obesity, type 3 diabetes, and plenty of other lifestyle related things, are costing the NHS a fortune.

Unless we make the NHS sustainable soon, it will go under. At the moment it is spiralling out of control.

*can not FUND everything for everybody

Exploded
I'm well aware that it predates Free movement - I said 70 years in my post
because in fact it dates back to the use of POW labour
But
the old Visas had a nominal fee, covered by the farmer.

UK Visas are now the most expensive in the world.
My UK passport cost me over £2000 all up (and I'd lived her for decades)
A standard 10 year visa for a non EU worker is over £250
try paying that out of veg pickers wages ....

Theresa May is obsessed with demonising immigrants
even though the UK has been importing Doctors and Nurses for decades
she is a narrow minded fool
and Jeremy Cunt is so rich he just does not understand.

LoveLearning Have you been to any hospital wards or GP surgery waiting rooms lately? They're not full of immigrants they're full of the elderly. So by your logic we should boot everyone out over 65?