Tory voters are hypocrites to complain about the state of the NHS

[Kendodd]

Wtf did they think they were voting for? The Tories have NEVER left the NHS in a better state when they left office than it was in when they came to power.

inews.co.uk/news/politics/tory-voters-believe-government-failed-nhs-education-austerity-poll-suggests-2058898

I am not subscribed to either Tories or Labour I don't have the confidence in either.
I do feel concerned about how delays in A and E and ambulances not turning up aren't being addressed and it's just silence from the government.
Why isn't there a plan being put into place to stop this from happening?
It's just all left to fester and degrade.

You missed (and continue to miss) my point. Any debate on any of today's burning issues seems to have at least one poster saying "yes but Corbyn" which is a shit and pointless response.
That he isn't even a Labour MP would suggest lessons have been learned. In fact the people who post this shit are deploying the pathetic "yes us Tories are shit but a past leader from your side who never got elected would have been worse"

Nope. The op was Wtf did they think they were voting for?

Like I say Labour supporters don’t like the last election mentioned but it’s there in the op.

It’ll come up as much as they hate it. What people were voting for included selecting from the options available.

If Labour had won in 2019, the NHS would still be fucked, its problems lay in 10 years of austerity and brexit.

We had good alternatives in 2010, 2015 but still choose to slash NHS funding.

We were warned Brexit would cause EU to leave and to not come here, we voted for that too & not just Tories either.

Luckydip1, in the 80s, the health tourism was blatant, I can remember a lot of Americans coming over having large surgeries. Free at the point of use..... no-one checks where you are from etc etc in the ED, on my last ward,we had folk "coming on holiday", who just happened to need surgery, have major health problems. One completely disabled gentlemen who was unable to move or communicate,was brought in by relatives,he was already resident in a nursing home,it would have been incredibly difficult to have got him on the plane,was put with us,bed blocking, absolutely no chance of any recovery. He was eventually transferred to a nursing home, relative given the bill.... which we all knew damn well, would never be paid. I would hope, working for the NHS for over 30 years, just might possibly make me a bit more than an armchair expert. WHO are a joke, remember what they said about Covid in the beginning.

The tories brought about brexit.

Because all you do is focus on the money - and think throwing more money at it will fix things. Well it won't. Until you can stop whinging about the funding and actually recognise that there are other issues that contribute more to the problem than its a lost cause.

Are you ready to have conversations about the fact we are living too long? That we need better social care so people can actually move out of hospital and free up beds? That we cannot fund certain operations? That maybe someone should pay for their own paracetamol if that is what is needed. That people need to stop walking to A&E if it isn't serious. So many things.

There is no bottomless pit of money - the NHS could take all of Elon Musk's entire wealth and still be shit.

I often think, people advocating an insurance type system must have never had the joy of trying to make in insurance claim. Try to make a claim and the very first thing the insurance company do is look for any possible way they can get out of paying it. I have had to go through a full complaints procedure twice to get insurance companies to just do what they are contracted to do. I also have private health insurance through my husbands work (I wouldn't pay for it, I would much, much rather just pay more tax). It's shit. I tried to make a claim for an operation once and the number of hoops they made us jumps through first was ridicules. If you think the NHS is wasteful what until you have to deal with private insurance admin. Although I suppose you could argue, private insurance saves money because of the number of claims they refuse.

I always think people poo-pooing health insurance as per many EU countries have never used it. I never received a bill - that was between the GP/hospital (EMCS etc) and the insurance company.

In Northern Ireland, the NHS is run by the DUP and Provisional Sinn Féin mandatory coalition when Stormont is running.

Central Government cannot be blamed for everything since it has devolved power in a number of areas to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I suspect the OP and most posters are taking an England centric view here whilst ignoring the current UK Constitutional arrangement. 🤷‍♂️

A Conservative Government could NOT have enacted Brexit without non-Conservative voters voting for Brexit right across the UK.

And not without non-Conservative MPs voting for it in Parliament.

Take it right back to source, a Conservative Government could NOT have implemented an EU Referendum if multiple party MPs had not voted to hold it. IIRC, the SNP were the only ones who voted against holding a referendum on EU membership. 🤷‍♂️

Of course its about money BUT over decades, not what the Tories do and just chuck a load of money at a problem and then go back to underfunding it.

Other countries have longer life expectancies but do not have the issues in Health that we do, over time, they have spent billions more than we have.

Money builds hospitals, buys equipment and trains and pays staff.

Claptrap.

They put it in their manifesto, no other mainstream party did.

Without that, Brexit wouldn't have happened.

However, voters from all parties voted for and against something they knew very little about.

@Kendodd

I often think, people advocating an insurance type system must have never had the joy of trying to make in insurance claim. Try to make a claim and the very first thing the insurance company do is look for any possible way they can get out of paying it.

Not my experience at all. I've made several insurance claims and never had a problem. Biggest claim was holiday insurance when we had to cancel two expensive holidays due to OH being diagnosed with cancer, we expected an argument (as it was possible he'd be recovered and fit enough to fly after chemotherapy as the holidays were months away), but in both cases, the different insurance companies paid out without a whimper simply based on a letter from the GP confirming the cancer diagnosis. Same when a moronic neighbour wrote off our car, again, no arguments at all - their insurance provided a hire car and paid out the value of the car (well actually higher than it's worth) within 5 days of us agreeing a figure - it was a write off! Also, my office was burgled, and I got a decent settlement figure for more than I needed to replace the equipment I needed (they paid out for several old PCs, printers, scanners etc that I no longer needed!). The most recent was for some private hearing aids which cost £3k - the audiologist suggested I put them on my household insurance as "named" items, which I did - sod's law was that they fell out as I was removing a mask (during covid) with one hand as my other hand was holding shopping bags and they both fell in a puddle - I doubted whether the insurance would pay, but I put in a claim anyway, and, yes, they paid for replacements without a quibble!

I have no doubt that some insurance firms play silly beggars, but from what friends and clients have told me, it does sound like a lot of the time, people are under-insured or havn't read the small print or try to pad out claims with white lies, etc. I've always been paranoid about reading the small print, understanding exactly what is covered, the exceptions, etc., and never been refused a payout.

Same during covid. Several clients got huge insurance payouts (tens of thousands) when they were forced to close during lockdown. They were the ones who'd used independent insurance brokers! None of my clients who'd used the cheap online insurance brokers (Hiscox etc) got payouts due to policy wording and exceptions!

Why am I not surprised you're blatantly ignoring the reality that almost every party in Parliament voted for the holding of a referendum on EU membership?

That vote actually made it happen, but Parliament COULD have voted no to it even if the Conservatives had it in a manifesto!

Here's a debate from 9th June 2015 which shows a majority of MPs voted to hold a referendum on EU membership:

www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2015-06-09c.1047.0

Only the SNP voted against.

No more mental gymnastics from you, please! 🤷‍♂️

I think you are the one with the mental gymnastics here.

Without Camerons decision to promise to hold a vote NONE of what you have said, would have happened.

I am not denying other parties voted for it too but if it had not been in the Tory manifesto and DC making time for it to be debated, it wouldn't have happened.

I reckon the discussion around too many people going to A&E is a red herring. Yes, there are lots of people who end up in there because they're drunk or overreacting to a splinter or whatever but a lot of people come to A&E because they're unable to get a GP appointment, the issue escalates, there aren't walk-in centres available as much as there used to be, and eventually 111 sends them to A&E because that's the only place they can get any kind of care. And of course this compounds the issue, but it's not just that people don't understand what an emergency is. Some of it is down to a lack of GP appointments that could have resolved the issue without A&E.

That's not how European 'mutuel' insurance works. The insurers are not permitted to cherry pick who they cover, or exclude pre-existing conditions, and premium rates are based on a cost per employee, so a big company may get slightly better benefits than a smaller one; optical cover is a popular add-on benefit in France (which is why there are so many independent opticians) or dental care is exceptionally good in Italy. It is arranged via the employer and the employee contributes a % based on earnings. The state funds the elderly on basic pensions, long-term disabled and unemployed people but better-off retired people continue to contribute based on their income. You pay a doctor's or consultant's fee, starting at about €25 (French GP's are discussing striking for more ATM). Operations are billed direct to the insurance company. Prescriptions are bought and a high % is refunded, along with most of the GP fee and any lab costs. Grossly oversimplified, but that's the essence of it.

@XingMing

The state funds the elderly on basic pensions, long-term disabled and unemployed people but better-off retired people continue to contribute based on their income.

This is where we go wrong. Pensioners don't pay NIC in the UK regardless of their income level. If we imposed NIC on those with higher incomes, we'd bring in a lot of revenue. Likewise if free prescriptions for OAPs were means tested - no reason why wealthier pensions can't pay for their prescriptions (exemptions for those with specific health conditions like younger people). Obviously, keep prescription exemptions for those with low incomes who wouldn't pay NIC anyway due to low incomes (if we kept same NIC thresholds as the working population).

We really need to move to a system where OAPs get benefits etc on a means tested basis, rather than automatically just because they've hit certain ages with no consideration of their income.

If we imposed NIC on those with higher incomes, we'd bring in a lot of revenue.

yet as soon as this is mentioned we get squeals of "I've paid in my whole life, I deserve x, y and z" (usually from people who have not paid substantial amounts "in" their whole life)

That isn’t the reason I object to retirees paying NIC, my objection is because currently there’s a direct link between NIC and state pension qualification. Obviously that would become a nonsense if people of pensionable age were obliged to continue paying NIC. Scrap it altogether and roll it up into income tax by all means, that would be fairer all round. But there would then be the problem of how entitlement to state pension was determined.

And means testing is prohibitively expensive to administer so it would save nothing. Easier to scrap prescription charges altogether, particularly since 90% of prescriptions are already filled free of charge.

I do agree.

I was mainly referring to the reaction that comes whenever any kind of change is suggested.

And yes to the prescription charges - it's a nonsense. I'm about to enter a period where charges will cost me a lot of money. Yet when in the queue at the pharmacy, I'm invariably the only one paying anything - a lady ahead of me the other day had ibuprofen gel and paracetamol on the list of meds she was receiving. No I didn't know her circumstances and no I didn't know her condition, but I imagine it cost the NHS far more to administer and provide for that than it would have cost to buy the same things in Tesco.

Surely a substantially smaller charge for substantially more people would raise more revenue?

I think the reason non prescription drugs are prescribed is because they can only be bought over the counter in relatively small quantities. It would be madness to make someone who needs a lot of drugs, say paracetamol, visit numerous pharmacies to buy all the medication they need. Maybe the “rationing” needs to be looked at too.

And the disparity between the UK nations is idiotic. My mum works in healthcare in Wales and someone she spoke to got free prescriptions for painkillers in Wales, who ordered more than he needed and then sent them on to his son in England.

And there's nothing stopping him.

The Tories had an electoral majority so on a three-line whip didn't need the support of other parties to pass the EU Referendum Bill. The fact other parties gave support to the Bill isn't proof the Tories needed support, they could have passed it without.