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?

ie if you deviate just one cream cake from the state required Lifestyle then you have no access to healthcare. What are we, North Korea? Some posters need to check themselves, seriously.

MichaelSheen I hear what you are saying but the NHS is not a bottomless pit & if some changes aren't made, it won't exist at all very soon.

All the NHS needs is the right level of funding, and it isnt getting it

WanderingNotLost posted this link on page 6. It shows that the Tories are deliberately underfunding the NHS.
That has to stop.

People are dying of hunger and thirst on NHS wards. That has to stop.

Increasing our bed capacity from 2.8 per thousand of the population would really help.
It's a central funding issue and the deliberately imposed scarcity of resources is turning people competively against eachother like fighting rats.
Is this what we expected in the 21st century?

If we start going down the road of the deserving and undeserving, whether in healthcare or in society in general, then we are well and truly fucked.

Who would make these decisions?

Who would question why these decisions were being made?

I think ... that the process of making that 'hard choice' is probably going to cost a lot more money than the initial treatment

I agree that's possible, but not that it's inevitable - see below

Who is going to make this decision and based on what?

The "based on what" is admittedly difficult, but we have over 200 CCGs in the UK, some of whose vanity spending, lavish expenses and skewed priorities boggle the mind. I don't want to out myself on here and realise that anecdote isn't the same as data, but I have a dear friend who's recently resigned her role on the local CCG in utter despair at the mindless empire building and political point scoring which infests it at the expense of almost everything else

As a PP mentioned, it's not necessarily all about money; it also involves who's doing the spending, what their motivations and level of ability are and whether any real accountability is in place

As someone with a long term health condition (diabetes) I am very concerned about the future. And my diabetes is not self inflicted, I got it at the age of 15 and am normal weight.

I don't believe many of those with diabetes are self inflicted either - there is a theory now that rather than diabetes being a result of gluttonous slobbery, many of those with the condition may get fat as they produce too much insulin in response to their food (carbohydrates specifically) and that insulin results in excessive weight gain.

I am petrified of getting any diabetes related complications now because I am quite sure I will be 'on my own'.

Seeing as there are four million diabetics out there, and the number is rising exponentially, this is a ticking time bomb in terms of increased pressures on the NHS (which in my opinion gives very poor dietary advice to diabetics) and will lead to massive increases in disabilities as a result of complications. Which will mean less people working and more people relying on state care. Which will be non existant .And private insurers will probably not touch people with this condition with a bargepole.

At the moment you have a situation where you have increasing public expectation

I find that very odd, personally. I don't live in the UK, now, but when I was young you went to the doctor if you were worried about your health. By the standards I read on mumsnet, I was a terrible time-waster. Now I read about people waiting weeks for a appointment with their gp, someone's 80-year-old father had a fall and had to wait four hours for an ambulance because it wasn't a serious problem, apparently.

"if you consider very elderly women, who occupy beds in huge numbers, you may well find that many never worked/paid taxes at all, except perhaps for just a few years before marriage and children"

So you think that these elderly women should be punished for simply doing what society (and the raging sexism and misogyny in it) expected of them at that time?!

Harry Leslie Smilth who is in his 90s talked about the time when, as a child he heard the screams of agony from a woman in the same street where he lived who was dying of cancer but the family couldnt afford a doctor or morphine.

I hope we never see a return to this.

if you consider very elderly women, who occupy beds in huge numbers, you may well find that many never worked/paid taxes at all, except perhaps for just a few years before marriage and children

Or you may find they did work like my DM, DMIL, DGM and many of their friends!

YY Piglet my mum is 81 this year and she didnt retire until Christmas 2015.

Helenadove I think we probably already are! When I went to hospital to have my second child in 2013 I had to bring my own painkillers (obviously the kind you can get over the counter not morphine!)

I had to bring pretty much everything that I could, which I didn't mind doing but was definitely a sea change to when I'd had my son a few years earlier.

I may indeed, Piglet - which is why I wrote "many" and not "all"

And Helena why would I think these women should be punished? Perhaps re-read what I said in my post at 19.53 yesterday, instead of just quoting isolated bits of it?

My grandmother worked (she was widowed with a baby in the 1920s). My mother worked. I've worked for 30 years without even maternity leaves. My daughter works. Many many women have always worked.

My father was in at the start of the NHS as a doctor so we know it from before and after in our family. We are better off with it but then and now it has always had to ration care.

On the whole we have a better system than many countries. We will cope. However always a good idea to look afte ryour own health. I've seen my GP twice in 15 years for example and that is partly because of things like I am not over weight. I have never smoked. don't drink. I don't eat sugar. many dairy products, flour, many carbs etc etc.

I work for the NHS. It is absolutely on its knees and I don't give a flying fuck what the government say.
We have a consultation in our trust next month, find out which departments are staying or going. I had worked hard to get where I am now. For what? Some knob head with and iPad and a degree in accountancy to tell me I'm not needed in my role anymore. We have no stroke unit, to be blunt if you have a stroke in our area you may as well call co op funeral care than dial 999 as the nearest hospital is 20 miles away. We have no neuro clinic, no dermatologist . They want to down grade, maternity, children's , icu and a&e.
Yesterday, for example . 65 people in a&e. 95yo on trolleys in corridors, people on beds , extra beds on wards, maternity closed and the pre natal unit opened up as a medical ward. Same with children's . You can access these areas off other wards. Wards that are closed opened up staffed by agency. I could be talking about any trust up and down this country which is shit. I don't know how to fix it. I go to work each shift and do my best. Understaffed, out dated equipment. I am emotionally and physically warn out. I don't want to leave my job for something more easy, I love my job.

YANBU certainly in the people I know in RL they just do not give a shit ...I despair how disengaged people are with stuff

Puzzled I have seen the full context of your post now. My copy and paste was from someone who had already copied and pasted that part of your post by the look of it.

Apologies

Absolutely no prob, Helena

What drinkswineoutofamug said. The difference is I did leave as I had had enough. Left the true frontline of the NHS anyway. You can only push staff so far (Hunt etc know this of course).

I don't believe for a moment that there isn't the wealth in this country to give hospitals, schools & social care provision huge cash injections.
All of them, but particularly the NHS, are in an appalling and embarrassing state.

maggiethemagpie the NHS are also still peddling the low fat myth when it comes to weight loss when its sugar that is the main problem.

Its so frustrating. Ive unfortunately had a fair amount of recent experience, good and bad. My experience was that acute care (not technical term so by which I mean life and death in an emergency type care) is very good. My DH nearly died this summer, he had emergency surgery, he is now back to normal. But anything not an emergency is awful, and needlessly traumatising and upsetting. And because general care isn't very good, people end up saying in hospital longer. Its stupid.

I agree Tories want to quietly kill the NHS so very little we can do. A majority of this country voted to cut public spending. So thats what we've got. Shame the opposition can't at least make a decent effort.

Immigration involves mainly fit young men

The graph shows statistics up to 2015

Light blue line, Polish

Dark blue line, other EU

To estimate current statistics, follow the illustrated trend

Net migration remains at record levels

I don't think anyone can deny how the massive surge of immigration in the past decade has affected the NHS. How can it not? An immigramt family with parents working but who have 2-3 kids are always going to use more services than the tax they pay surely? 2 x births, natal care, education

The cost to the taxpayer is stupendous

The pressure on public services is unprecedented

EU immigration has caused a humanitarian crisis in the UK

EU immigration has categorically not caused a humanitarian crisis in the NHS.
The vast, vast majority of EU immigrants are working and yes, having families.
Foreign women aren't queuing up in A&E in labour
The NHS has been decimated by systematic underfunding because its very existence is ideologically unacceptable to Conservatism and always has been.