To be upset about my mum’s attitude to the NHS?

[Beautifulblues]

She’s turning 64 this year and so has benefited from the NHS all of her life.

She came from a fairly poor background, council house, working class, she had to leave school at 16 to get a job as they needed to contribute to the household. She shared a bedroom with her siblings until she was 14, very little in the way of luxuries.

Despite all of that she’s now a staunch conservative and she has said several times recently that she believes the NHS is no longer fit for purpose and we should be looking towards a health insurance system like other countries (she referenced France here but I have no idea of their healthcare system). I’m feeling very angry about it…she’s benefitted this long but doesn’t want me or her 4 year old grandson to benefit from the wonderful NHS as he gets older.

No, but they take £10k a year off 18 year olds - hocking them into costly debt for life. Yeah, not immoral at all when a decent wad of that money is spent on bloated academic wages..........

Everything in the west seems to be bloated and corrupted to rip off the general public. It's all so broken. I don't know why more can't see it.

The French healthcare system is exceptional. Free to low-income families, covered by low-cost insurance for everyone else. Can be topped for a more £££ experience if you wish. If you have any interest in knowing more about it, have a read before you attack your mum for thinking there is a better way that 30 hour waits at A&E.
www.connexionfrance.com/article/Practical/Health/A-guide-for-residents-and-second-homeowners-to-the-French-healthcare-system-in-2021

I agree with all of this except that we should involve NHS officials in the process - they’re too agenda’d. They have very clear motive to insist that the current NHS system is fit for purpose and functioning well because it’s their job to make it so. They’d absolutely argue that the NHS just requires more funding and that nothing else needs to change, which isn’t so. I think their input would simply sabotage any efforts for a better system. In my experience, they’re completely out of touch anyway. Clinicians should absolutely be involved but anyone higher up would just tank the entire project for their own reasons.

Tell me you know fuck all about the NHS without telling me you know fuck all about the NHS.

Unless you’re about to drip feed I very much doubt she actively doesn’t want you or your DC to benefit from the NHS. She has an opinion on how to deal with, the frankly failing NHS, she’s not alone in that opinion. Where she might be blinkered is the reasons why it’s failing…which brings me to:

She came from a fairly poor background, council house, working class, she had to leave school at 16 to get a job as they needed to contribute to the household. She shared a bedroom with her siblings until she was 14, very little in the way of luxuries

But that’s probably why she’s a conservative now. I’ve seen this exact same thing with friends and relatives, all of whom grew up in similar circumstances. She might see it as she managed to pull her self up all by herself, at great personal sacrifice, so maybe she thinks therefore why shouldn’t everyone else be able to do the same? That’s a natural conservative mentality - ‘There’s no such thing as Society’, I paraphrase the quote. This country and its successive governments (in which I include the most recent of the ‘Labour’ government) have done a marvellous job of pitting individuals against one another, even those with the absolute least, instead of looking where the issues this country has really stem from, and their governance being the issue. It’s a ‘quick, look over there!’ approach that has been remarkably successful. And it’s really not all that easy to have your eyes opened to it once your opinion has become entrenched. This meme, an oldie but a goodie, sums it up (and it doesn’t work for ‘foreigner’ - insert single mother, disabled person, benefit claimant as appropriate)

All I said was as that they weren’t public sector…

I know too many boomers like this. If you ask them how they'll pay for private medicine when they are older they respond that they'll keep the NHS for pensioners! I'm alright Jack!

@WiseUpJanetWeiss it was a few years ago now to be fair but I don't doubt there's plenty of improvements to be made.

I used to work for a company where if you had a money saving idea you could present to the management and if they liked it and adopted it you could get involved with implementing and then they'd give you the savings for the first year as a bonus!

YABU.

We need healthcare free at the point of delivery but the current NHS model is broken and we need to reform it. Looking at how it is done in Europe would be an excellent first step. We have lots to learn, and need to stop thinking that universal health care free at the point of delivery can only be delivered under the present NHS model.

I still haven't got over hearing an interview with an NHS Head of Strategy earlier this week on Radio 4. He did not appear to have any strategy for dealing with the current crisis....

How do you solve an ageing population with an absolutely fucked care sector? I'd posit that's the government's responsility?

The NHS isn’t free it’s free at the point of service.

I’ve paid national insurance since I was 18 I will at some point work out how much I’ve paid into the system.

It’s been stripped bare by consecutive governments, and now we are dealing with the fall out.

Personally I feel all management need to go and start afresh

Twenty odd years ago I ended up in the waiting room of a Paris hospital. It was full of sick desperately poor black people and a few tourists who couldn't believe they'd ended up in this hell hole. (I was passing round my French phrase book.) Every time people bang on about French healthcare I think about that hospital with the overflowing toilets that looked like it was in war zone. Those people were not getting top quality healthcare.

I agree with you on the NHS but your mum is entitled to her opinion. Just agree to disagree.

OP, I disagree strongly with @TempsPerdu ‘s mum but your mum’s view is just different. As long as she understands that it means that she might pay more in contributions or some aspects of health care might not be covered it’s fine.
And by the way you are wrong if you think that all can stay the same. Our society’s changed and NHS system should reflect this. It means bigger contributions from us in some way or another.

The NHS has been underfunded and undermined until it’s barely functioning, it’s an absolute tragedy and we voted for it as a country.

I have zero sentimentality about the NHS. If the German, or French or whatever model worked better for less money then bring it on. But there's very little evidence that they do - on equivalent funding - in fact the opposite.

And switching to a different system would have ENORMOUS costs - probably running in the billions. That's a big oil tanker to turn round.

I've never seen a convincing theory of change as to why the change would be worth it. It's usually just 'competition' - but health is a weird market (you don't haggle well while having a heart attack) or 'non-jobs' where actually the NHS could probably do with more accountants and penpushers to run better.

Just to add her default reasoning for the NHS being in such a state is the increase un immigration, which in turn has increased the general population…

If we did go to a private health scheme I’d expect some input from the government due to the money you’ve paid in during your life time.
So someone who is 90 should get a good percentage paid by the government, and someone who hasn’t earned a wage yet would pay it all.

I'm 54 and I agree with her. I work for the NHS. It's not fir for purpose. We need to do something

Interestingly I heard someone on the radio say yesterday that people keep going on about the government but where are the people who are running the NHS. The Chief Executive and senior managers on huge salaries who are given huge amounts of money to run the service efficiently. Why aren't they being called to account and being forced to speak about the current crisis and what their plans are. It's a valid comment and I can't even name who is running the NHS. They need to be being held accountable.

Not getting into her political views but how exactly is she wrong in her perception of the NHS? It is not fit for purpose right now. Doesn’t mean that’s the fault of individual healthcare workers and it definitely isn’t because of immigrants but it really isn’t functioning and too many people are struggling to access basic healthcare.

As for France, maybe go read about it because you seem to be confusing their system with America. They have a broadly similar population to us, spend a similar amount on healthcare and based on what I know of it (most of our extended family live there) the care is excellent. A relative had a recent surgery with a long recovery and despite being in her 70s and living alone she was quickly discharged from hospital where she had a nurse coming round twice a day, the doctor popping in, regular visits from the physio and they even organised a cleaner for her. In the UK presuming she managed to get the surgery, who knows how long she would have been in hospital and lengthy hospital stays are much more expensive than all of the above.

When I worked for the NHS, myself and a colleague were given a certificate and a £50 gift voucher each for saving the NHS a certain amount of money in the last year. It was the only project we worked on that year and we saved less than a third of our combined salaries. I'm still trying to figure out how anyone could see that as a saving!

Yes. But 'do something' keeps on getting equated to 'fundamentally change financing model' with very little evidence that the financing model is the actual problem.

Do you vote Labour OP? Have you heard what Wes Streeting has been saying about the future of the NHS? They don’t think it’s fit for purpose either. And wouldn’t reverse Brexit.

"the wonderful NHS"

Presumably she's contributed towards its upkeep for 48 of her 64 years and seen it change dramatically in that time.

She's entitled to her opinion.

The NHS, in its current incarnation is unsustainable.