To rant because this NHS is not a charity

[Monty27]

Wtf is all this about having to donate to a service that is national.
The clue is in the name:
NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
and breathe 😭

Sorry put who are they going to listen to the person giving them cash or the person not giving them cash

They make the vast majority of their money from advertising. They won't get advertising unless they can demonstrate that they have a large, active user base. They won't have a large active user base if the perception grows that non-premium users are second class citizens liable to have their threads deleted at the whim of others who have paid for the privilege. So, in that instance, they have no choice but to listen to the people giving them the most cash, i.e. advertisers, not premium users.

It could be insurance via the government. Not necessarily individual companies. Other countries manage this and spend more on health care. So look at Germany, for example. Better Covid 19 outcomes and spends more money. It’s not just from taxation. We need to be creative and ensure people who can pay do so. NI stops when people retire but they use more and more services. If their pensions are as high as the earnings of others then why not pay NI as younger people do? Some self employed pay no NI at all? Stop that loop hole too.

And you've experience of NHS management to know that most of them are doing fuck all and just taking cash to put in their back pocket??

This thread is nasty.

@BubblesBuddy
The NHS has seen funding rise from £110 billion (not million) in 08/09 to over £140 billion this year. See attached. That’s a 33% increase

So in simple terms a 3% rise each year?
We are an aging population and healthcare inflation is much higher than RPI.
Sure we treat some foreign nationals who then don't pay but would you rather step over their dead bodies on your way to school or the shops?
Or if someone has TB we don't treat them .....

Charity is very well but it can allow govts to shirk their responsibilities and not fund our healthcare correctly, also it creates a postcode lottery, poorer areas get little.
take a look at the Hospice sector? funding cut dramatically over recent years so reliance on charity ever increasing, in what can be an essential part of our lives... Terminal end of life care.

@lyralalala I know that, but if people just ignored instead of getting into an argument then they might go away.

Who said NHS management embezzled funds? I don’t recall that.

Well bubbles you can't even acknowledge how wrong you were on ba owners so I'm not expecting you to pick up the undertones of this thread and the shit spoken about NHS management.

Care for the elderly is self funded in many cases. Hospices started as charities near me. All of them. None are state operated. Like many care homes. Yes, we cannot do everything so we should insure for old age.

Many people have not had 3% wage increases in that period. In fact 3% is above the rate of inflation. Because we have these issues facing the NHS is precisely the reason we need to change how it’s funded and what it does. It’s not sustainable in its present form. In order to improve we need to embrace change.

@Monty27 you appear to be very ill informed and somewhat ignorant.

As a PP above has posted there is a charity separate from the NHS. It is
www.nhscharitiestogether.co.uk/what-we-do/#charities-together

You will see that this is providing essential services to NHS workers which the NHS will not provide (they provide healthcare but not wellbeing to their staff). Generally this is what people are raising funds for, this is what Captain Tom raised funds for and I did an event with a team that raised £31k for them. Before continuing rudely shout away at everyone why don't you read up on what they do? This is a specific Covid -19 response charity and most NHS workers I know have been extremely grateful for it. Funnily enough a lot of the donations we go were from NHS workers.

@handiies If you don't like a thread you can always walk away from it, rather than just thinking everyone should follow your whims and stop discussing things you don't like

Anyone can buy shares in BA parent comps you. That’s how a free market works. However there are still many owners who are pension funds.

I wonder how many people that have donated would be against high taxes and/or didn't pay the full amount they should have in tax over the last year.

Charity is in many cases providing services the gov should be. The gov know they can fall back on these charities so they cut more public services.

We should scrap all charity and pay more taxes - that being stop all tax loop holes - stop amazon dodging tax, stop Branson being a non dom - stop people working as a contractor and paying lower rate tax when they are earing £80k plus p/a, every tax evasion and avoidance from the builder to the massive corporation. Then raises taxes over all.

Then properly fund everything. Everything the citizens of this country need.

The NHS has seen funding rise from £110 billion (not million) in 08/09 to over £140 billion this year. See attached. That’s a 33% increase

Have you heard of something called inflation? A 33% increase is roughly 10 years of compound inflation.

Spending on the NHS has not gone up in real terms. However the population has. So per capita spending under the tories is marginally lower year-on-year. It's death by a thousand cuts.

Providing donations (should people choose) to a national service that all of us benefit from throughout our lifetimes is no bad thing in my book.

As many people have stated, these donations are used to enhance the service.

The issue is when public health services were set up, the situation was miles apart from what we have today. They were set up to adequately provide for babies being born, people dying and fairly simple surgery that really didn't use much technology apart from a simple standard equipment, X-rays and medicines that were standard and fairly cheap. You got a lot of bang for your buck back then.

Nowadays, we have babies being born with complex medical and surgical conditions that would have simply be held for minutes/hours/day or so until they died in the original public system; complex operations performed by surgical robotics which costs a shit tonne; we have the technology to treat many things that we were not able to treat in the past; we have expensive specialised medications that cost a lot as their scientific development costs a shit tonne and companies want to recoup this and make a profit in order to make development of more medicines we need possible. All of this, people would have just died when public health systems were initially set up, so the cost was essentially a bed where there could be some hand holding and simple pain relief. In proportion, public health systems are now being expected to do everything modern medical advancements allow, but basically with a similar budget to when the system started (when you allow for monetary differences over time). This can't work. It doesn't work. It's not working.

Also, people's expectations have changed drastically since inception. The service people demand now of a health service is vastly different.

While everyone says they would be happy for the system to receive more, all hands are firmly under the table when it comes to paying additional tax to finance this. Yes, there is waste and a fuck tonne of red tape that adds nothing, yes that should be addressed but like any public service, good luck with that.

Monty, as for you being able to manage your household budget, so why can't the NHS manage theirs? That's because they are nothing alike. I can't even believe this was an analogy.

As far as I'm aware the 'fundraising for the NHS' is more of a 'fundraising for additions to the NHS'. E.G mental health support for doctors and nurses, additional toys for children's wards, additional beds to certain wards to allow parents/partners/family members to stay at hospital overnight when a loved one is having treatment. The standard basic care is nationally funded but little extras are fundraised for. If people weren't fundraising youd still get your cancer treated for free at point of use. but it may not be as comfortable without charitable donations and this has been the case for a long time. It stands to reason at a time when more people than ever are using the NHS there is additional fundraising...

It is a charity because people get a service who have paid nothìng in.

I think the problem here is that so many people think that a National service is well funded, WE pay for it and hence the whole abuse prevalent on MN about Tories, a bit short sighted as it has been underfunded since I started working in it in 1969. The point about the charitable gifts is often to provide something extra that cannot be funded within the medical budgets, to make life more pleasant for those having treatment. Often by people who wantt to give something back. I reallyy dont see how this is an issue. Would yu say patients should not have these extras, or that the "Govt" or tax payers ( hilariously low proportion) should cough up. It is a useful exercice to make a comparison of the proportion of GDP that goes to the Health in European countries, many people shout about the funding but would not be willing to increase contributions

As far as I'm aware the 'fundraising for the NHS' is more of a 'fundraising for additions to the NHS'. E.G mental health support for doctors and nurses, additional toys for children's wards, additional beds to certain wards to allow parents/partners/family members to stay at hospital overnight when a loved one is having treatment. The standard basic care is nationally funded but little extras are fundraised for. If people weren't fundraising youd still get your cancer treated for free at point of use. but it may not be as comfortable without charitable donations and this has been the case for a long time. It stands to reason at a time when more people than ever are using the NHS there is additional fundraising...

I think as long as people know exactly what they are donating for then there is no issue

Perhaps atm there could be some confusion that people think they are donating to PPE, and the likes when they are in fact donating to other, important, but different things.

Much like it was a suprise in the other way when I went to a fundraiser for a charity in Scotland to discover they fund nurses posts as well as "nice" things.

I know the NHS is a black hole. It will take everything from other services we want. We need to find other ways of enhancing funding. It doesn’t need to come from taxation. It could be ring fenced from enhanced NI that everyone pays. However the sums are so large, Branson and Amazon tax won’t make any difference at all. Yes, they should be accountable. I’m not sure how charitable these organisations are either. In this country, philanthropy is a mere shadow of what it is in the USA. It’s more or less expected in the USA. If you are rich, you fund things for others less fortunate. Here you clear off to your private island and ask the government to bail you out. That’s what we do though, isn’t it? Ask the government for more and more and more. We don’t look at how we can change.

Obviously NI is a tax but it’s easier to sell it as being for the NHS.

it’s about time we paid for the food we consume as patients. They manage to charge for parking but not food.

It's not that simple when you have an ongoing health condition that means multiple hospital stays. If the patient can't afford food then they may not have any, which isn't going to help recovery. We also don't want takeaways and junk food being delivered to hospitals.

I think in regards to maternity care and some one off treatments, they could maybe look for paid food. But in most cases you would still need someone to bring you the food, so you need to what pay before you get there, get billed at the end of your stay. Are you exempt if you're on benefits or pension. It starts to get a bit complicated.

Better to just provide patients with food. It's part of the care given.

@Bubblesbuddy
" you fly with Easyjet so you have no taste?"

Was this a particularly poor joke or have I missed something deep and meaningful?

@Monty27 🤦‍♀️ Don’t donate then but I’m Sure you’ll be grateful of their services if/when you get ill. At the moment you sound quite ungrateful and I’m not sure why.