AIBU to be scared stuff about what will happen to the NHS if the Tories get in?

[BatleyTownswomensGuild]

Just that really, things are bad enough as they are.... My Mum died in an under-resourced NHS hospital. I have a friend battling cancer at the moment, FIL is waiting for surgery, SALT support for DS (who is ASD) is almost non-existent already.

I can't believe after 10 years of austerity the Tories are going to get another chance. I'm at the point that I'm lying awake at night worrying about this? AIBU?

I agree that meddling with the NHS is political suicide; it’s ingrained in the psyche of this country.

However, the NHS needs reform. There isn’t infinite funding no matter who is in power. More advanced treatments and medications are incredibly expensive and people are living longer but not necessarily living longer in good health. Research does show that centralised provision is probably the most efficient model but people have to be much more realistic about what the NHS should be providing. How much does it cost the NHS to prescribe and dispense paracetamol that can be bought for 25p in the supermarket, people need to be realistic.

Money won't solve the problems in the NHS. It can have all the money in the world thrown at it and it won't help.

What will help is it being run properly and people taking responsibility for their health and not misusing it.

And whilst you're all slagging the Torres for running it into the ground, have a look at the PFI initiatives put in place by labour. What fucking idiot looked at those figures and thought they'd be a good idea?

And whilst you're all slagging the Torres for running it into the ground, have a look at the PFI initiatives put in place by labour. What fucking idiot looked at those figures and thought they'd be a good idea?

All those fucking idiots who took out a mortgage to buy a house, I guess. The principle is the same. Having said that, the reason
PFI is so bad is partly because it was fucking idiots who negotiated the contracts.

It's the public sector workers who negotiated the contracts who are fucking idiots (like the majority of people I encountered whilst working in the NHS), you can guarantee a private company wouldn't have put their signature against such a shit show.

Absolutely @Bloomburger. And too arrogant to employ experts to do the work.

I’m no Tory and not voting.
But bojo has promised an extra 33.9 billion for the nhs so probably don’t worry about politics. The nhs has far bigger problems than politics.

@Practicalmagico
*"Also you need to consider why austerity was put in place and the growth that our economy has undergone under a conservative government in the last 9 years.

As happened in 2010, Labour will take us back to spend, spend, spend and when this country is under a mountain of debt, the tories will be voted back in and will have absolutely no choice other than to make cuts to spending again in order to undo all the damage done by labour. Then once those cuts have been made, labour will cry ‘austerity!!!!’ Without actually looking at who is to blame. You can’t spend an obscene amount of money and then cry when cuts have to be made to stop the country being crippled by debt"*

In the 9 years the Tories have been in, the national debt has increased from 1 Trillion to 1.8 Trillion. The Tories have already put us under twice as much a mountain of debt as they started with.

But bojo has promised an extra 33.9 billion for the nhs so probably don’t worry about politics

I saw Bojo on the news yesterday, presenting the Tory manifesto. A few seconds in, I remembered that I couldn’t trust a word that came out of that man’s mouth, so I stopped listening. For all I know, he promised every NHS nurse a solid gold teapot, but it’s irrelevant.

Watch the very first episodes of Casualty and you'll see even back then that the NHS was cash strapped. The hospitals were nowhere near as posh as they look nowadays either

The hospitals were nowhere near as posh as they look nowadays either

That’s all right then. Never mind not getting treated as long as the hospitals are “posh”.

My dad died in an nhs hospital from and infection he picked up whilst in for something else. It was dirty, there were tablets on the floor - the staff didn't know or care where they came from.
His care during his last stay was shambolic and poor.

This was during the last labour government. It doesn't matter what colour their rosette is, they're all hopeless and as bad as each other.

“Build nurses accomodation maybe” we HAD nurses accommodation, the tories sold them all off in the late 80’s/90’s I lived in one of the last ones.

My mum came to the UK as an immigrant to work in the new NHS because there weren't enough British women (yes, only women were nurses back then) to do the job. She was prim and proper all her life and yet had to steal bread off the ward to feed herself from time to time. Patients would ask their families to bring in food for the nurses. This was the mid fifties. So take your "golden age of the NHS when everything was wonderful " and stick it.

We hear the same every election time that the Conservatives are going to sell the NHS off. Never going to happen as it would be political suicide.

It is wasteful though - I get multiple letters sent for appointments and also reminder letters, even though I've said I would prefer emails. Treatment though has been consistently good. I had an abnormal smear, within a month I had a colposcopy and 2 weeks later had the all clear. I can get a GP appointment normally on the same day, and the surgery has introduced online consultations as well.

Ds has SN and the CAMHS service has been excellent - he sees his consultant every 6 months for a review and his repeat medication can be ordered over the phone and the prescription is then sent out.

I think there are wide geographical variations from what other peoples experiences are.

Posh hospitals? There are a few decent buildings but the vast majority of hospital estates are not fit for modern healthcare.
Places like Brighton with the cramped, inaccessible Barry building. In fairness the children’s hospital is ok.
Places like St Mary’s Paddington, which should be a flagship but which has ceilings falling down in wards and a maternity unit which had to close because none of the lifts were closing.
Places like Hammersmith where the IT systems fail because the building floods quite regularly.

Hospital buildings are in an appalling state, generally and have had no investment for decades. There’s the odd one or two that have refurbishment or rebuilds but not many.

We hear the same every election time that the Conservatives are going to sell the NHS off. Never going to happen as it would be political suicide.

Or they just run it into the ground and push the idea that private health care is better anyway- you only need to worry if your sick, if you eat healthy etc then you should be fine...blah blah.

These things don’t happen overnight. The frog in the boiling water scenario forms the basis of most Tory policies. Think about the ‘you are fed up with experts’ snippets that came out over and over again months and months before the experts said No deal Brexit would be a disaster for the economy.

They are always playing the long game and the destruction and privatising of the NHS has already started, they have already started feeding people with “it’s the extra pressure from immigrants/not sustainable/radical overhaul”

We hear the same every election time that the Conservatives are going to sell the NHS off. Never going to happen as it would be political suicide

They’re already doing it by stealth. The Landsley Health and Social Care Act introduced compulsory competitive tendering for all contracts. Most of them since 2013 have been won by private companies. Just because they operate under the NHS banner doesn’t mean they’re not privately provided.

*Also human
*
labour started privatisation in 2003.

Also human
*
labour started privatisation in 2003

No, they didn’t. If you think that’s the case, please provide some evidence. If you’re referring to PFI, it was adopted by Major’s government long before 2003.

PFI was implemented for the first time in the UK by the Conservative Government led by John Major. It immediately proved controversial, and was attacked by Labour critics such as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman, who said that PFI was really a back-door form of privatisation (House of Commons, 7 December 1993), and the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, warned that "apparent savings now could be countered by the formidable commitment on revenue expenditure in years to come".[10]

Terrified.

The NHS keeps me alive, I wouldn't be here without it, without it I will die. The end, nighty night, over and out.

YANBU OP.

Sadly my family have needed lots of help from the NHS, a lot in the mental health side - there are now almost no services where I live. My son also has a neurological condition. The last two times I've had to take him to A and E we've had to wait 5 and 8 hours respectively. The latter time, no doctor outside of A and E would see him.

As others have said there are huge staff shortages. Funding in real terms has decreased over the last 10 years. A and E and even cancer treatment targets aren't being met. Ambulance jams and corridors full of people on trolleys are commonplace in A and E. Significant parts have been quietly privatised. In some areas some medication is now only prescribed on a private prescription - significantly more expensive.

People who say the Tories won't get rid of it are deluded. They already are. People who can afford to, go private. This will continue as the NHS is under-resourced and the government can argue it's just not working and needs to go.

stats here

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/22/the-guardian-view-on-nhs-privatisation-the-92bn-question

YANBU.
It is truly frightening. Don't let it happen

This is how far stealth privatisation has gone.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/21/private-firms-nhs-budget-matt-hancock-promise?__twitter_impression=true