To ask how the NHS will be saved by labour

[mummytwoshoes]

Currently reading a lot of conservative bashing on FB etc about the privatisation of the NHS, I've seen the labour promise to 'save the NHS' but I haven't seen anything about how they will fund this. AIBU to ask if anyone knows?

Deficit by party. Tories have been decreasing the deficit but not by loads. Labours deficit was pretty bad before the financial crash.

Because of the huge deficit before the got into power and cumulative nature of debt, the current Tory government are paying a huge amount of interest on the historical debt now.

Any analysis of Labour debt needs to include the £300bn of PFI they took on, which is coming out of NHS and education budgets, whereas if they had borrowed the money, it would have been cheaper and come out of a central budget for interest. But that would not have been 'good' politics.
The NHS has always paid around 50% of its budget to private companies/self-employed individuals.
The only party to introduce charges to healthcare since 1945 are the Labour party (opticians/dentists/prescriptions).
The Conservative party tend to take over after Labour periods of fiscal mismanagement - 1979 and 2010. Labour tend to take over after fiscal responsibility is restored, and then destroy it.

Uk population is 65 million.
Nhs employees are 1.4 million.
For every 46 people there is an Nhs employee.
Just keep throwing money at it.
Mind = blown.

Here's a paper that breaks this figure down. I find it fascinating!

content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB13724/nhs-staf-2003-2013-over-rep.pdf

In comparison to other countries the NHS is actually very efficient:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uks-healthcare-ranked-the-best-out-of-11-western-countries-with-us-coming-last-9542833.html

Couple of years old (2014) but still interesting.

He's going to save the NHS with the £350 million a week we won't have to give to the eu after brexit 😂

No seriously, the tories are actually starving the NHS of money because they want it to fail and then privatise it, there's loads of ways to pay for it including getting Starbucks, google etc to pay their bloody taxes. Income tax is only being increased on wages over £70k and will only be on the earning above £70k and if anyone thinks these people can't afford to pay a bit more tax then imagine how the disabled felt when they lost £30 a week out of the pittance they receive.

Even a little tax on corporations and the scraping of Trident will save enough to save NHS and education crisis. AND I don't care whether Labour do it or LibDem but it needs doing. Whoever looks like promising this, will get the vote of me and my family.

Jupitar £80k actually. Mind you, they will probably be the same people who will also be clobbered for 20% tax on their private medical insurance and 20% for their private school fees. People who send their kids to private schools and who have operations and consultations via BUPA and the like are actually saving our state education and NHS money so not quite sure it actually makes sense to clobber them both on the income tax front and these other fronts as well. And the IFS has already pointed out that this income tax increase will produce nowhere near enough extra to fund the NHS.

That's not to say something doesn't need doing, it does. But anyone who truly thinks just taxing what are perceived to be higher earners will solve the problem is financially naive. Besides, big firms will just change things around and pay people less in "income" and do more in "rewards" and "share allocations" to get round paying of this tax.

Interestingly, had it been £70k as you had stated, the majority of MPs would fall into this new proposed tax regime as they receive a salary of £74k. Nice how they sit just outside it, isn't it?

It's weird seeing responses here - Labour have pledged only to increase taxes on those who earn over £80k.
Also worth noting that the deficit has INCREASED under the Tories.

As a user of a service that is now privatised - both wheelchair services and audiology - I've found they've got a lot LESS efficient since privatisation.

Before if it was broken generally there would be a staff member employed to fix it and to a high standard. Now they just replace and chuck the broken one away. How is that efficient?

Well aware this is anecdata, by the way.

Also emergency care. I had emergency surgery and spent 36 hours without a bed - in A&E and theatre recovery. How can that scenario be solved without extra funding?

Well aware there needs to be efficiency drives and not just funding but I'm not sure that the for profit private sector is the best way to do it.

ShatnerI didn't say that income tax increase would pay for the NHS, I said the large corporations paying their bloody tax would cover it.
And yeah as another pp said we can scrap trident too 👍🏻

So why was half your post about the increase to income tax (even with you getting the amount incorrect)? It's no wonder people harp on about "politics of envy". I earn £20k, so I do regard £70k as a lot of money but it is relative to some extent. If I had £70k where I live, I would absolutely consider myself very very well off indeed (I'm single). If I lived in London and had two kids, I would probably think different due to the cost of housing and childcare there over many other parts of the country.

For the record, I totally agree that more needs to be done to close loopholes for companies.

Bishop It may well be cheaper to throw and replace rather than repair. So more efficient, not less.

Even without changing any budget (except who gets it), the NHS could be renationalised. Reverse everything that has happened. Instead of giving money to private firms (Virgin for example) to run services, give them direct to the hospital so they can carry on employing staff rather than them being shifted to Virgin contracts. Instead of buying in services from private hospitals, re-open closed wards in NHS hospitals. Once all the private shenanigans are stopped, recreate health authorities and remove the internal market (along with the costs of the internal market). Then sit back and see how cheaply the NHS runs compared to now.

I remember the first time private contracts appeared in the NHS - for cleaning services. THAT was when cleaning went wrong - nothing to do with 'matron'. Privatisation costs, because companies want profit. To get that profit, they either charge more, or they cut corners.

And none of this changes the fact that the NHS is now being deliberately underfunded, because it would now be extremely easy to privatise it - it practically is private anyway, but people haven't noticed because it is free at point of delivery. Literally all they have to do is start charging. That couldn't have happened without New Labour continuing to advance the programme (including the PFI travesty). But this isn't New Labour, it's real Labour, and a last chance to save the NHS.

Christmas Are Labour planning to nationalise GP's, pharmacies, drug companies, equipment supply companies, building firms etc to 'nationalise' the NHS?

caroldecker - dunno, not privvy to the manifesto, like the newspapers apparently are! My impression would be GPs yes, because they always were part of the NHS. IIRC there was a central supply group buying from various companies (but thus able to strike god price deals because of volume ordered). But I'm willing to bbow to better memories on that one. Not sure pharmacies outside of hospital and GP surgereis ever were part of the NHS? The rest, well, I'm not sure why you think it would be needed for the NHS to be genuinely a National Health Service rather than a loose conglomerate of government-funded private companies (at least one owned by the PM's husband), which is what it is now.

To all those who said some of the policies/pledges would be paid for by scrapping Trident, could you please now re-explain how this gap in your funding equations will be filled as the leaked manifesto says this:

"Labour supports the renewal of the Trident submarine system."

I think to scrap Trident would be very short sighted, especially given the current state of the world's megalomaniac-led countries.

There is only one way to address funding.

We have to pay more for our NHS.

Not by charging for appointments but by increasing income tax specifically for this purpose.

And we must address obesity because this impacts on each and every aspect of NHS costs.

Scraping trident would cost billions, it's a fallacy to think it would be able to save the NHS

They're not going to scrap it anyway.

Sorry, but throwing money at the NHS isn't going to solve it. It needs a total reorganisation and, yes, probably SOME of it does need to go private in some way. It is doing all manner of things now for which it was never designed, has too much management etc. But no party will ever do it, they're all too scared of the sacred cow. It is the FIFTH largest employer in the WORLD people. And for those saying it is understaffed and there's been no investment, the NHS had 300,000 more employees in 2015 than in 2015. And that wasn't under Labour, was it?

Adequate, appropriate funding is exactly what is needed alongside other measures- none of which will happen without it.

Dunno, just need to accidentally leak a few drafts of our manifesto and see what the polls say about them, then we'll get back to you to tell you what our plans/principles are.

Christmas GP's have always been self-employed, effectively private partnerships being paid by the NHS and making a profit. Similarly pharmacies are private profit making companies paid by the NHS. Drug companies, supply companies - over 50% of the NHS budget does and always has, gone to private profit making companies. How is Corbyn aiming to change that?

I'd love to know why so many people insist on referring to funding the NHS as "throwing money at it"? As though spending money on our healthcare system is somehow a huge waste that they resent.

Actually investing more money in equipment, staff and services would benefit patients funnily enough.