To change who I'm voting for based on one news story?

[ShouldIStayOrShouldIRun]

This one ->

www.itv.com/news/2019-11-27/jeremy-corbyn-says-uncensored-documents-show-nhs-is-part-of-toxic-post-brexit-trade-talks-with-us/

I had already decided to vote for the conservatives, mainly because I couldn't bring myself to vote for any of the others who seem hell bent on gleefully ripping up womens rights. I've always voted so abstaining/spoiling wasn't an option.

But after reading/watching the above I think I am going to switch to voting labour. We are a disabled family, and could never afford to pay for healthcare (and I doubt insurance would touch us with a barge pole).

I don't like Momentum/Corbyn really but I'd rather complain and fight for my right to a single sex ward than not be able to use one at all

Re: brexit I voted remain in the last referendum but to be honest just have fatigue about the whole thing, so I'm not basing my vote on any of that. (Though seems a second vote isn't that terrible an idea).

Just posting because I can't see anything on here about this yet and I've gone from feeling quietly confident that Conservatives would win to feeling nervous about it now. Anyone else?

Scotinthenorth wrote: ... "...Labour will be going on about the tories wanting to privatise the NHS. It’s all they’ve got. They will never privatise it."

.
NHS Services run by private companies/corporations, which DO make a profit for their shareholders, are increasingly being given NHS contracts. It's called Outsourcing and Marketisation..

.
NHS For Sale, The problems of Outsourcing.

'There are a range of problems that have emerged in NHS services that have been outsourced. Here we collect examples since 2013 involving a range of non-NHS providers.

The number and scope of contracts awarded to the non-NHS sector (private and not-for-profit) rose sharply after the Health and Social Care Act became law in 2013. Many of the predicted problems from this marketisation can now be seen in these real life examples.'

Financial Insecurity
Conflicts of Interest
An Increase in Cost Cutting
A Lack of Accountability

www.nhsforsale.info/the-problems-of-outsourcing/

We could bang on about the NHS all day, but we all know that ALL parties will be investing huge amounts into hospitals and surgeries.

The NHS is a convenient fig leaf for Labour to hide behind, because the real crux of the election is brexit, and we all know that much of labour's support base voted to leave, and they will not be backing Corbyn any time soon with his second referendum, who could imagine Corbyn in Brussels trying to hammer out a brilliant trade deal or anything else for that matter. It is truly for the birds. The only way to put brexit to bed once and for all is to vote for the conservatives. I voted remain, but would rather go out with a deal than crash out with nothing at all.

So I am voting for Boris, for the first time ever I will be voting for the conservatives - for the NHS investment, to keep the economy working and to finish the brexit saga once and for all so we can all think about more important things at long last. All I can see with Labour on the brexit front is another five years of arguments and disharmony. I just can not stand it.

The NHS is already being privatised by stealth, by the back door as various parts have already been hived off & the chronic underfunding will make the NHS even more attractive to predatory privateers including Trump who’ s insisted the NHS is defo on the table!
Voting Tory is only an option if you’re a billionaire or can guarantee you will never be seriously ill or never have a hospitalising accident...

dee Don't you ever get bored banding this around at every election, you know as well as I do that simply isn't true.

To avoid all political parties from using the NHS as a political football to be considered at election time only; we should have a specific income tax for the NHS and other essential services e.g. Police and Fire Services. Call it National Insurance or something similar to be overseen by the three major parties, the leader of each service provider and, a damned good accounting firm!

YANBU and well done for being open-minded and thinking seriously about it.

I can’t personally understand why anyone would vote Tory unless they’re really rich or don’t give a shit about others, but for some reason people do.

cats I am voting tory BECAUSE I care about others actually.

I would vote green otherwise.

Scotinthenorth wrote: ... "...Labour will be going on about the tories wanting to privatise the NHS. It’s all they’ve got. They will never privatise it."

Virgin Care (one of Richard Branson's numerous companies) has over the last 7 years been awarded NHS contracts worth well over £2 billion, with several large contracts in community health.

So the NHS is paying private companies, with shareholders who expect profits, to provide NHS services.

Many of the predicted problems from this marketisation can now be seen in the NHS, including Financial Insecurity, Conflicts of Interest, An Increase in Cost Cutting, A Lack of Accountability.

It's a good point about actually reading the manifestos.

The Conservative Party are clearly so confident about theirs that they had to create a phony Labour Manifesto website.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/tories-under-fire-over-fake-labour-manifesto/

Even if they got round electoral law by having 'a website by the Conservative Party' on it, it's still pretty desperate, dishonest and low.

It is extraordinary that Johnson can lie so often, so publicaly and so unashamedly - "we're building 40 new hospitals" - and the press just let him off.

I'm just recalling how even the right wing press went for May before the last election. She was far from competent, and at least there was some attempts by the media to hold her to account.

Johnson seems to get a free pass however dishonest, bullying, abusive and cowardly his behaviour is.

Colourofmagic Branson has also started procedures to sue the NHS and trousered a tidy profit out of the public purse in the process.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-richard-branson-virgin-care-legal-settlement-tendering-contract-a8080961.html

Neither party is going to be able to "save the NHS" in its current format because it's unsustainable
The alternative is not the US system
The Canadian system for example has basic healthcare free at point of service and most people have private health insurance as part of their employment package or if not then private insurance is affordable and readily available
That said there is still long wait lists and bad hospital conditions
But expecting the NHS to provide free care for everyone with any kind of injury or illness is just ridiculous

I will also add that my family member was a consultant surgeon for years and retired early when became disillusioned by the bureaucracy and many levels of pen pushing managers brought in by the last labour government that prevented him actually doing his job and operating and saving lives

They will never privatise it. It would be political suicide. If they were going to, it would’ve been done in the last ten years

It has been done in the last six years. Every contract has to go through competitive tendering, 70% of contracts since 2013 have gone to private companies. Every tendering process costs a fortune and consumes vast amounts of NHS time.

It’s being privatised by stealth, nobody’s noticed.

People are noticing the effects - the waiting lists, the avoidable deaths, the delayed operations, the systematic blunders - when it affects them, but it's hard to see the bigger picture when you just want your mum to be properly cared for.

Or you can afford private medical cover and are too narrow minded or thoughtless to recognise that the entire private healthcare system relies on the NHS ie training, A & E provision.

@QuietCrotchgoblins I would hate to work somewhere which put profit before people but the system is in huge deficit so who is making a profit right now ?

@thefluffysideofgrey
I haven't read all 24 pages of this thread although I will do, think I'm up to page 9 so apologies if someone has already asked you this, but your post on page 1 scared the heck out of me:

*The Tories will win. I think they'll get a solid majority.

I work in healthcare- not frontline; policy, DoH&S.

Anybody who is not very rich and has a health or social care needs would be mad to vote Tory. We ain't seen nothing yet, put it this way.

I'm signing my family up to private healthcare this week*

Can I ask what healthcare provider you decided on, and why you decided to sign them up rather than wait 'til a bit later? Genuine question. Is there a benefit to signing up for private healthcare now? And I have nowhere near the insider insight you have, but do also agree the NHS is fecked under the Tories so am considering doing the same as you at some point - just thought I had a bit longer, IYSWIM?
Thanks.

From the Kings Fund:

In many cases the use of private providers to treat NHS patients reflects operational challenges within NHS providers and is a continuation of longstanding practices. Provided that patients receive care that it is timely and free at the point of use, our view is that the provider of a service is less important than the quality and efficiency of the care they deliver. The NHS can also benefit from partnerships and joint ventures with the private sector to deliver some clinical and non-clinical services

Our GP practice uses a "private" provider for pathology. We now get blood test results back the next day rather than a week. Personally I would call that a better service.

But an increasing amount of NHS services are being provided by private companies

This is not true. It has been broadly stable for many years.

Kings fund is a right wing think tank though iirc.

*But an increasing amount of NHS services are being provided by private companies

This is not true. It has been broadly stable for many years*

It is true. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 made competitive tendering compulsory for all contracts. Since then 70% have been won by private providers.

There are a number of ways in which this is wasteful:

The tendering process is lengthy and expensive so the private companies reflect this in their pricing
It uses huge amounts of NHS time to evaluate the bids
The NHS is pretty rubbish at writing contracts so rarely gets a good deal
There has to be an element of profit so the amount of money spent on the service is reduced.

I agree with you, I wouldn’t vote for a party which is hell-bent on ethnic-cleansing a whole race. That’s why I will not vote Labour.

I am disabled. I suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes, liver problems, 2 cancer scares this year alone, I get refrigerated medication delivered to me every month, so for me the NHS is sacrosanct but a Labour government scares me even more than a rumoured carving off of the NHS so I will not change my vote. I am not Jewish - I am a black African traditional labour-voting woman who will not vote for a Corbyn-led Labour Party.

It's interesting how people like to conflate the idea that the NHS must precure services by competitive tendering thus some services are now provided by private companies and the idea Labour are trying to stir up with their so called NHS privatisation dossier which mentions the NHS only 4 times in it's 450 odd pages.

Firstly competitive tendering is specifically to get the best value service so surely that is a good thing.
People who say on here that they don't like the idea of private companies making a profit from our health care, well you'd be surprised how much money is paid out to managers in the NHS and how little goes to provide actual services. All businesses, be they nationalised businesses or private should be run at a profit. In private business the profit is the reward for running the business properly yet in nationalised organisations the management seen to be rewarded no matter whither they run at a surplus or defecate. In fact I would actually say that running organisations at a defecate is the main aim of senior management giving them the ability to ask their political masters for more and more. They will never ever have enough money thus the idea that nationalised industries give us better value is, in my opinion a false one.

As for future trade deals with the US and others we will go into a deal which makes trade for our country better. If pharmaceuticals are a big part of that deal and the other party wants to increase our prices then there would be no point in going ahead with the deal.
We buy drugs from US companies at the moment without a deal so why would we go into one that makes it worse?

Alsohuman, and others who are providing clear, useful and correct information here, about the huge waste of nhs money already being pocketed by private companies. Thanks for this info.

OLP2019 I’m an NHS consultant who spent a couple of years working in Canada, with a group of very frail older patients. There are a lot of misconceptions about the Canadian system, but I think a lot of people in the U.K. would get a shock if we moved to that system.

Most people don’t have top up private healthcare, and it certainly isn’t provided by most employers (I didn’t have it, and I worked for a massive hospital trust, DH didn’t have it and he worked for a large IT firm). You’re thinking of the US there. Well off people may have it - it’s about $400-600 per month, depending on what it includes (some includes dentistry and opticians, some includes physio, some is just a drug plan).

Plenty of my patients had drug costs of a couple of hundred dollars per month. Not means tested. If you can’t afford that, tough. You pay for social services. You pay for nursing homes. You pay for transport to hospital, and if you can’t get there you don’t get care (not being able to afford a private ambulance to get to and from dialysis once you are too immobile to get in a taxi is a common reason for stopping dialysis). You pay for Zimmer frames, grab rails and commodes yourself, and if you can’t afford it you manage without. I have patients whose families carry them up and down stairs every day over their shoulder in a fireman’s lift (crazily unsafe).

It’s a totally different mindset, far more responsibility lies with the patient to fend for themselves, and if you can’t you should have planned better. If we introduced that over here, people would die. In Canada people expect to have to do stuff like personal care for their family and even random neighbours, and to support them financially. Here the expectation is that the state has a responsibility to provide it. There is no sense of that duty of care (from the public or from healthcare professionals) in Canada.

Yes, the 'cradle to the grave' foundations of the NHS are pretty unique.

People are already dying because they cant afford to take time off work/pay fines to zero hours contract employers to attend health care appointments, even if transport etc is paid.

But it's absolutely impossible for a bunch of entitled Etonians who will never materially suffer however many mistakes they make to understand that.

Kings fund is a right wing think tank though iirc

Nuffield Trust and Full Fact also concur.