To want to continue having free healthcare?

[Abbabababababo0]

I really appreciate the fact that me and my family have been able to access the NHS for free. I dread to think what our finances would look like if that hadn't been the case. The Conservative government aims to bring in charges similar to the ones in Guernsey (see picture). My DS and I would be dead without the NHS. Happy to pay taxes so that everyone can access this. SO, I am worried that the NHS is going to be screwed. AIBU?

Are you sure about this? I havent heard about it.

Are you talking about the “cherish your NHS” tweet where someone in hospital in Guernsey posted those charges and said that she misses the NHS?

Because that’s a very different thing to saying that the Tories are definitely going to bring in those charges.

If not, do you have a source, please? I would read with interest!

YABU not to explain why you think we should believe this is bein proposed. Google doesn't know what you're talking about, so I'm guessing this is more highly-made-up-than-usual Labour propaganda.

Bullshit propaganda. Not founded in truth at all. Bore off momentum troll

I am not a momentum troll- I'm a worried Mum
I don't know what they're going to do exactly (nobody knows yet), but I know Gove has written a document detailing why we don't need an NHS and now I'm just worrying.

A google on "Gove Document NHS" brings up nothing. Are you just making this up as you go along? Do you have any specific reason (backed up by at least one link) to think anything at all is going to happen?

You're not even saying what you think is going to happen now, your second post is saying something completely different to your first.

I actually lifted it from a facebook post without checking anything. Partly panicking as not well at the moment and there is a feeling of uncertainty about the future of the NHS, and I am worried that Tories, but I do admit that my original post was based on a feeling and no factual articles. I have asked mumsnet hq to remove it, as I didn't think it through.
Over- tired and anxious.

Don’t believe what you read on Facebook

I dread to think what it would be like for our family. Ds can get very poorly very quickly, we've always managed to have him in the right place at the right time by going in at the first sign of something going wrong. I would hate to be like some of the parents of children in the USA with the same condition and symptoms as him who find themselves sitting out side hospitals in the middle of the night trying to decided if they can afford the charge to take their child in to be seen when they might not need any help. I don't want that to ever have to factor into my thinking with him. I also dread to think about the cost of insuring him with his genetics diagnosis which lists so many things that could go wrong.

Those of you who can't see the danger currently posed to our NHS are being extremely naive. The NHS isn't suddenly one day going to be 'bought out' - privatisation is already well underway, and it happens bit by bit in phases.

This isn't extreme lefty Momentum scare mongering - this is factual stuff, loads has been written about it, although not in the tabloid press. Most of the general public don't seem to notice it happening, but ask literally any NHS doctor and they will tell you what is happening and how worrying it is.

The NHS has been being privatised by stealth since the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which allows private providers to bid for NHS contracts (eg Virgin Healthcare). Whilst they don't charge patients at the point of care (they do sometimes run a two tier service where you can opt in to faster treatment for £££), this has had the effect of drastically changing and weakening the NHS over the last 7 years, because the true NHS ends up with all the difficult, non-profitable bits of the service to run.

Here's some articles on privatisation by stealth:
fabians.org.uk/privatisation-by-stealth/

www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2018/08/gps-are-being-privatised-stealth-just-dentists-were

What is being threatened now is another step down the privatisation route. International trade talks between the US and UK are opening up the NHS to the US drugs market, which would massively affect the price of care here.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/27/us-trade-deal-nhs-investigation-brexit-drugs

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-us-trade-deal-nhs-leaked-papers-dossier-corbyn-a9220916.html%3famp

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/7795cb64-877d-11e9-97ea-05ac2431f453

And this isn't information from random Facebook posts; this is information from well-researched books and articles. Like these ones:

www.amazon.co.uk/Nhs-Sos-How-Betrayed-Save/dp/1780743289

www.amazon.co.uk/Plot-Against-NHS-Stewart-Player/dp/0850366798

These are both in relation to the 2012 Health and Social Care Act - what we are about to see if the Tories get in and negotiate a trade deal with the USA which includes access to the NHS will make everything much much worse.

It won't happen overnight but I think it's very unlikely we would have anything like the service we all currently rely on if the Tories get another term. They'll keep the branding because people trust it, but free universal healthcare for all will be a thing of the past.

Vote tactically and get the tories out if you want free heath care for your loved ones

Voting to get the Tories out is the only way to protect the NHS.

I am so worried about this - I have dc and dp with long-term health problems, reliant on medication. Under the dirty deal the Tories are planning with USA there will be massive increases in cost of pharmaceuticals to the NHS.

We are heading straight back to the days before the NHS when the rich could afford private care and the poor suffered and died.

Very similar rhetoric from the left in 2005/2006:

Labour's great NHS sell-off
"Why we need a national campaign now to defend the health service."

"After dumping the Tories' internal market, Labour reintroduced it in England in 2002 in a more vicious form.They are now opening up the NHS to plunder by the private sector in a much more blatant way than the Tories ever did."

"The professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey put it more bluntly: "This is really the destruction of the NHS."

"Confidential documents have been leaked which spell out Labour's sell-off plans."

www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/4647/29-09-2005/labours-great-nhs-sell-off

Labour orders £22bn privatisation for NHS Logistics

“They have a plan to privatise the NHS - piece by piece.”

"It is driven by ideology - Tony Blair’s total commitment to the free market."

"Under Blair and his health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, Britain has shifted closer than ever towards a US-style health service."

socialistworker.co.uk/art/9462/Labour+orders+%C2%A322bn+privatisation+for+NHS+Logistics

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/our-nhs-already-being-sold-21022099?fbclid=IwAR2DH1WqOrdoSMYF6xuOWHugl7wF-ap-Z8-kjht-keglLk9Bp5RBrSj9XUE

Yes, privatisation has been going on for years - first it was the buildings, financed by dreadful PFI deals. Then the cleaning services.

But now it's going up another notch.

YABU. I used to live in Jersey where they had similar charges, e.g. a £20 charge to see your GP. Nobody ever missed appointments, I could see a GP the same or next day, in the evening after work or even on a Saturday morning. I had to have some minor surgery when I was there, I could get an appointment with the consultant and a date for the surgery I needed within about a fortnight.

A lot of people can’t access it though. When I lived in London it was impossible to get an NHS GP appointment. Where I live now you aren’t going to get your issue resolved within a reasonable amount of time on the NHS if it’s too complicated for a GP to deal with alone. I would support these charges if it meant that the BHS provided proper healthcare.

@ArseDarkly it is already the case that the rich can afford private healthcare and the poor suffer and die.

Velveteen I don't think your experience is universal. I live in London and my GP practice is excellent; with both my children I've always been able to get a same day appointment when it was needed.
I know service is patchy now but I think it's still working very well in some places.

“If you want free healthcare for your loved ones” has to be one of the most disingenuous or daft posts on the entire NHS debate.

It’s not “free”.

It’s paid for by taxes.

The NHS today is a very different beast to the one that was conceived after WW2. People are living much longer; there are expensive treatments that could not have been dreamed of back then; premature babies are able to be kept alive until they can breathe and function for themselves; the population is much larger. None of that is “free”.

I do not want to see the NHS replaced with an insurance/private system. But I also think it’s untenable as it is. You could shovel in money until doomsday and it would still be swallowed into a black hole. It needs several major things: an overhaul of the many inefficiencies; tax rises dedicated to the NHS; proper collection of corporation tax; changing people’s attitudes so that things aren’t wasted or taken for granted; possibly paying for some smaller things like GP appointments for those who can afford it. Fundamentally, the CEO and shareholders of large pharmaceutical and other medical companies need to stop seeing health as human, not an open goal for profits.

When we can work out how to change those things, we can have a shot at not only keeping, but seriously improving the NHS.

But it still won’t be “free”!

• need to START seeing health as human, not stop! Sorry!