Will Boris now fund the NHS properly?

[Moominmammaatsea]

Today’s papers are reporting that Boris can’t thank his doctors and nurses enough and that he is crediting the NHS with saving his life. AIBU to wonder if the PM will now have a change of heart and fund the NHS properly and reward all its workers with the pay rise he voted down before?

Surely a weekly clap will suffice. They don't need money.

@MogeatDog

Management & procurement need sorting first - too many administrators on 6 figure salaries

True. They also need to reduce the number and complexity of "targets". I swear that half those managers are managing perfomance because PIs have become so many, and so complex.

The target culture creates perverse incentives imo, and leads to resources being allocated at things that are counted, rather than things that count.

It also hinders investment in preventative work (a chief fire officer once said to me "You can't count fires that didn't happen", which sums it up nicely) and that is why areas like MH are so underfunded. You can count the length of waiting times, and mortality rates, but you can't count the number of people who didn't get sectioned.

billions of NHS debt

What does it mean, for any NHS service to have got in 'debt'. For me, as an individual, it means that I have spent more than I have earned. Perhaps I should not have done that, to balance, I need to cut back a bit in subsequent months. Or perhaps I cut down for a few months, in anticipation say of Christmas.

How does that work for an NHS service, which is free at the point of use ? How can they regulate their spending? Turn some people away once the budget is used up ?

Just the way this has been reported, cancelling NHS debt sucks us into thinking that the NHS has somehow been irresponsible and been bailed out. It's not so. It can't be sowhile the free at point of use remains.

NHS debt really means underfunding. Which the government has belatedly made up for.

I do wonder what they will do in future.

It's not a binary free for all or completely private. A mixture of public and private insurance might work, retain some curbs on spending but the overall cost would be higher. It's not simple, is it ?

When I worked in the NHS the trust I worked for would do things like refurbish wards at the cost of nearly a £100000 and then close them down less than a year later ,they would have 're bare minimum! If staff working on wards ,but then have to get agency staff in ( at hugely inflated rates ) when people went off sick etc ,Monday to Friday 9-5 we would be over run with managers etc but in evenings and weekends we would be working at dangerous levels and nobody gave a damn,just as long as there were no !major incident,s and of course if things did go wrong it was always he nurse in charge,s fault never the lack of staff etc .

@FinallyHere no, PFIs rather than 'normal' debt. The whole point of them is that the work is carried out up front and then you pay at intervals, kind of like a lease car I suppose! They work out extremely expensive, and means work was committed to which was largely unaffordable, because it didn't need to come out of the budget the year work began, and eats into the budget every subsequent year. It is more complex than that, but essentially a company carries out the work and owns it for the period of the term, and then the government isn't guaranteed to own it at the end, and often has to pay again for the privelledge. Thankfully they are out of favour now, Labour appeared to be very fond of them for a while though.

Boris is unlikely to become a better person because the NHS saved his life. He will almost certainly want to carry on selling the health service piecemeal to the US. He has no moral centre. Worst case scenario, he will in fact take his survival as vindication of his worst decisions.

I have been a major supplier to NHS - just giving them more money will not resolve this. I agree with a PP, the sickness policy is massively exploited and the waste is staggering. However at its best it’s world class but I would like to see some sharing. The public abuse it because it is seen as free. Some of the European models need looking at, its not one or the other.

If you can call an ambulance when you have had too much to drink you can pay for that service.

Labour bang on about NHS funding because they have nothing else. Nothing. That’s why they don’t get voted for. The country just does a massive eye roll at them.

How can they regulate their spending?

Not waste money in the first place. A town near us got a shiny new health centre under Brown/Blair. It's a 3 story huge building that replaced a small GP surgery/health centre. The top two floors have never been used. The GPs and district nurses etc work out of the ground floor along with other services such as diabetic eye checks one day per month. When it was planned/opened, it was supposed to have a minor injuries unit, xray, small operating theatre etc - by the time it had been built, the local trust decided to beef up the nearby city hospital instead and the town health centre floors weren't needed anymore. It's that kind of money wasting that needs to stop.

Their procurement is also flawed. They vastly over-pay for basics that could be bought for a fraction of the price. One of my clients is an office supplies firm. Each year they produce a catalogue which has crazy high recommended prices. They then make the procurement managers think they've negotiated a fantastic deal by offering, say, a 50% discount for particular customers, like GP surgeries or a hospital dept., but in reality, no one in their right mind would ever have paid the full RRP. They say it's all part of the game - the procurement manager can trot off to trust board meetings to tell them how wonderful they are to get a 50% discount, the supplier is still profiteering even with a 50% discount because he's given higher discounts to everyone else to compete with the likes of Amazon etc.

A few years ago, the staff on just one ward at our local infirmary saved around £50k per year by shopping around to buy their own non-clinical supplies. That's just one ward, and saved by "normal" people. It was in the local paper and the figures were confirmed by executives no not "gossip" or fake news. If that could be replicated, it could save tens or hundreds of millions. Trouble is, NHS staff don't seem to care about the small things, but the small things add up!

I’m not denying the NHS has inefficiencies and structural issues but having worked in both the NHS and other healthcare systems and lived in the USA, I don’t think it is any less ‘efficient’ than private schemes that include insurance companies working for profit.

I think NHS staff have been grossly let down in regard to PPE.
But sadly I think there wont be enough money budgeted for them to get pay rises.
Interesting to hear from NHS staff themselves calling out money being spent in efficiently or mismanaged. My DH has for a long time said that no amount of money you could throw at the NHS would ever fix it.
Both my parents died from long term illnesses and had years of hospital treatment including spells in ICU. I couldnt fault any of the treatment they received and my Ddads GP was amazing, but the communication between all the nhs agencies/depts and social care seemed old fashioned and inefficient.
My DD has just finished a course of outpatient treatment for a minor procedure over 2 years. We were sent letters informing us of the apt date and time with bold type warning if you didnt keep the apt you would not be offered another one and to call the number if you couldnt make it. As the apts were made several weeks ahead we couldnt always make them. On 2 or 3 occasions I called (a week ahead) to say we needed to rearrange. None of these were ever noted and we were told off the next time for a "no show". So therefore would have been in the didnt turn up for appointments category. In the end I took DD out of an exam for her penultimate apt as they had no efficient way of cancelling and rearranging.

I think what he'll take from his experience (bed ready, top specialist) is that they are managing brilliantly as things are.

Where would the staff come from for any extra spending to be worthwhile?
Those in training now are having their courses turned upside down and as we emerge from this pandemic, the freeflow of HCPs around the world will be very much limited.

I do hope that Johnson will emerge a better person, though he'll probably put his survival down to his superior fighting spirit.

Doubt it

Nope. He may quietly sell it though.

The borrowings to cover this will be massive. Paying people 80% of their wages, bailouts to keep businesses going. Lower tax take because of lost jobs and reduced business. We will all have to pay more tax to keep the country going

The government may seriously start looking at other European country healthcare setups, which tend to be a combination of taxpayer funded and some form of private insurance or private payment. Those systems will start to look more attractive to ensure the NHS is properly funded. It will help make the general public see that perfectly sensible countries with a decent social safety net: France, Denmark, Germany, etc, have better healthcare for everyone because they don't expect taxes to pay for healthcare for everyone.

Fund it how? The magic money tree? Even if he wanted to, there’s no money left so he simply can’t.

The magic money tree

Hi Theresa, it's been a while!

Off the top of my head: corporation tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax. End to non-dom status. Closing loopholes. Tackling tax havens... That aught to do it.

Yes if we have had Austerity for 10 years, yet seen a massive growth in the numbers of the super rich in this country, then its pretty clear our tax system favours the wealthy.

As all countries will need to raise revenue, perhaps we'll see an end to "we can't tax them anymore, they'll move...."

Off the top of my head: corporation tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax

But corporates will have gone bankrupt (Debenhams) or generating far less profit to tax. Wealth and potential inheritance will be spent by parents helping their out of work children, or on day to day bills where they have lost their jobs. DH and I for example, instead of paying school fees out of earnings, will have to fund them out of savings meaning there will be no inheritance to pass on.

Jason - what about YOU paying for it? Too many people stating others should pay. Anyone but you..

There is a middle ground in the European model. Those people stating it will all be privatised. You do know how silly that sounds? Corbyn et al whined on about this as part of his GE campaign and look how well that worked out for him.

Can't that loon Rees-Mogg cough up a few quid from his Covid profiteering??

I hate the left wing rhetoric.

Face it. You lost.

😂

Face it. You lost.

Wow, that was constructive.

We ALL lost. Anyone who ever needs any kind of public service, not just the NHS, lost.

And OP, no he won't fund it properly but idiots will still vote Tory .