We need a new healthcare system

[FindANewWay]

Our healthcare system in the UK is shit. You have to pay into it as soon as you're earning 2/3 of minimum wage and it's an appalling service. We were already ranked way below other European systems prior to covid, and now we've got a death and infection rate on a par with Brazil.

The only strength we theoretically hsd in our terrible provision was that it was theoretically open to everyone, but actually that has proved not to be the case. Care home residents shunted out of hospitals, covid patients dying in the community and being denied treatment and admission. It's all happened. Because our healthcare system is tied up with politics. And it has failed us.

We shouldn't be clapping. We should be angry. Angry that we have been let down.

We don’t need a new system
We need to properly fund, staff and resource what we have.

You can't do that through taxation though. No other country in the world does that. Because it doesn't work.

You know, when I hear people talking about "at least it's free at point of use", wtf use ie that? Really, what is that to be proud of, that people earning £50, 60, 70 grand pay fuck all towards healthcare while the provision slides to the bottom?

We need another model, with proper money funnelled in through wages like every other country in Europe has, so that we can treat people in the way they are treated everywhere else in the west bar the USA.

And we certainly need a model that, in time of pandemic, doesn't measure its success on how few people are in hospital while 45 thousand citizens die.

YABU definitely.
If it had been properly looked after and funded, it would still be the envy of the world.

YANBU in the sense that something needs to be done, but in many ways actively choosing not to spend large amounts of time and money treating those close to death and in poor health, such as many care home residents, needs to happen more rather than less.
Unfortunately any party that proposes to fundamentally overhaul the NHS or get rid of it entirely has no chance of getting any where near power, but the current system is neither sustainable nor delivering the best possible outcomes.
One of the biggest failures with the current model is that the objective often seems to be maximising the quantity of life whilst ignoring the quality of life when it reality it is often more compassionate to allow many experiencing an unreversibly low standard of living to die comfortably and naturally rather than continuing with invasive treatment that often has little chance of success and no prospects of improving the quality of life.

@DancingInDespair

We don’t need a new system We need to properly fund, staff and resource what we have.

I agree with this.

And "free at the point of use" was really helpful when I went to A&E this week. "Free at the point of use" is really helpful when I speak to my GP every 4 weeks to get my prescription.

It hasn't been the envy of the world for a good long time, at least two generations. We are a laughing stock.

I see Conservative HQ are active tonight.
Softening us all off for the privatisation.
Our NHS is amazing and the envy of the entire world. We need to look after it because once it's gone, it's gone.

As far as I can tell the rest of Europe have higher taxes/social security and they still have to pay to see a doc.
If people & businesses all paid the taxes due (rather than going off-shore etc), and successive governments didn't hand out contracts to their friends, it would be very different.

Needs improving and some serious changes in terms of everything BUT having lived in a countries with expensive healthcare and very poor healthcare, I'd take the NHS any day.

Oh ffs people and corporations dodge taxes in continental Europe too. This doesn't mean that you can't attach charges to wages etc and get a proper bloody healthcare system. Most people in Spain, Italy etc earn less per hour than most people in the UK. But when they have symptoms of cancer they aren't left waiting so long they die from it, because their healthcare systems are better, because they don't pursue this insane funding model that no one else in the world does.

@FindANewWay

It hasn't been the envy of the world for a good long time, at least two generations. We are a laughing stock.

Utter BS.

On a par with Romania then, in terms of world rankings.

Maybe that's not a laughing stock for you, but considering the comparable GDP it's not great.

It’s not the envy of the whole world. Plenty of countries have free at the point of use systems that function just as well.

Problem with our NHS is too many managers, doing Sweet FA, unable to manage or cope when there is something major. Top execs get paid ££££££ (have a little google at their pay) Most of the time they are busy having frightfully important meetings to organise more frightfully important meetings, and then meeting to discuss the last important meeting. Meanwhile clinical staff, and those who actually turn the cogs and keep things running, are bashed on all sides.
Sure be angry OP, but at least aim your anger where it is warranted. Far too many managers in the NHS, on huge salaries and unable to, quite frankly, organise a piss up in a brewery.
But watch how they blame everyone else for their inability to actually do the job...remember that old proverb? Those that do, do, those that can't manage!

Exactly @DancingInDespair. Why on earth do people think all of those pensioner Brits go to live in Spain? It's not just because of the climate; it's because of the free at point of use healthcare that is way better than ours.

Inevitable that there will be posts saying that it's the Tories. Or a Tory plot to privatise the NHS.
That's lazy and sloppy.

The OP is right: it has to change. The system and often the people. No-one who works in the NHS believes that the system can not be improved. No-one.

The NHS is one of the most cost efficient systems in the world. What we need to do is fund it properly and most importantly decouple it from political interference. A politically motivated reorganisation costs billions. Let medics and business minds run it, not politicians.
Most of the Covid problems were down to political dithering and funding cuts.

Well as we have seen it can't be divorced from political interference. This entire covid fuckup has been asked bad as it is due to wanting to present a vision of the NHS to the public. A public that were dying in care homes, dying at home, in a pandemic that PHE and the government strategized due to wanting news images of ICU wards at less than capacity and empty nightingales. I mean, people actually died. Loads of them. Far more than any other comparable country. The NHS has been shit for years. Just about the only thing in its favour in a pandemic is that it should be open to all. But it wasn't.

Unfortunately we will never have real change. As soon as anyone even suggests a 'new' system the extreme left start screaming that our hospitals are being off.

Realistically its as good as its going to get right now, a black hole for money.

@DancingInDespair

We don’t need a new system We need to properly fund, staff and resource what we have.

This^^

Place

got a death and infection rate on a par with Brazil.

V little to do with NHS, poor govt choices and management of the pandemic caused this.

And what's with these asinine complaints about "political interference"?
What do they want the taxpayers to do? Pay a shedload of our hard-earned money in, compulsorily, and just shut up? Have no say through the democratic process about how our taxes are spent?

I agree to a point, all the way until you said we shouldn't be clapping. Of course we should. Those we are clapping for are the people who are fucked over by the system, day by day, and still go back for more. I'm pretty certain it isnt for the money but because they think of those whose care falls at their feet.
I do feel angry that the NHS has let some people down. It is severely underfunded, and the excellent people who work for the NHS are overstretched and underpaid for what they do.

I speak from experience. I've been left with no choice but to pay for treatment I desperately need abroad. I'd like to hope they'll find the nhs better now, but I doubt it

Tory HQ must be putting their PR out to some CHEAP agencies these days! LMFAO