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.

@NancyJoan
Don't believe everything in The Connexion.
It says you're required to have health insurance, which isn't true although it's wise to do so.

Something has to change as the NHS clearly isn't working now. If we can't even discuss alternatives what hope is there?

It’s amazing to think anyone is deluded enough to not realise that the NHS needs complete reform. It’s just bizarre, but people like you OP are one of the reasons it will stay shit, it’s like a cult, ‘wonderful NHS’ ‘USA’. ‘Just needs more money.’ Bonkers.

This isn’t true. I’m a high earner and I would definitely prefer a healthcare system where anyone who can afford private healthcare goes private when it’s practiceable to do so and the NHS is reserved for those who actually need it. I’ve expressed that opinion multiple times on this site but people take great offence - those who can afford private healthcare take is a personal attack and those who can’t take it as an attempt to make the NHS taboo somehow (like claiming benefits). Many people accuse you of being a traitor to the NHS and, of course, the inevitable “what about if, instead of paying for private healthcare, you just paid more in tax, if everyone did that then we could properly fund the NHS”.

Been in the NHS for 25 years. Can't say I've ever done a course I'd describe as 'woke', and that's in around 50-80 hours of mandatory training every year.

The vast majority is on things like how to spot child abuse, basic CPR updates, infection prevention...

If you have all the answers you claim that I don't, please tell me exactly the time, cost and exact names of these courses that I'm wasting my time on.... Or are you just regurgitating the headlines from the daily Wail?

OP, mindless ideological worshipping of the NHS is the problem here. We need to face facts: it's fucked. Your mum is just being practical in thinking that something broken needs a mega overhaul.

Looks like more money will be thrown at it and things won’t improve for patients

Over a barrel with this stuff, it’s infuriating to watch

The IEA? Hahaha. I'm not even going to click on that.

YANBU

I'm a boomer and so are many of my friends. Don't know anyone with these views.

Not many systems are cheaper.....

Australia spend $5400 per year per person
UK spends around $4300, so about 20% less in absolute terms

so Australia probably wasn't the the best example.

The UK spends around 18% below the EU14 average per person, per year on health.

If people are going to claim the NHS is 'expensive' or wasteful they really need to start giving actual data of comparator countries that are generating better outcomes for the same money....

I can save you the effort, because there aren't any. We are right at the bottom now of a steep curve, so there are a few countries like Italy, NZ that spend similar amounts, but go much further down the table and we're alongside Korea, Chile, Latvia and Mexico.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?locations=OE&most_recent_value_desc=true

In 2010, the UK was generating some of the best healthcare outcomes in the world, for one of the lowest total expenditures. Since then, we have fallen behind in the rate of spending increase compared to health care cost inflation and our outcomes are now worse, because it is comparatively under-resourced compared to 13 years ago.

The problem with patients paying very, very minimal costs is that this system would normally cost more to administer than it would bring in.

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!

yeh this is unlikely. People won’t pay if they don’t receive the and pensioners need people to pay. Including us when we’re older.

Fix social care and improve population health. The NHS can survive in current form just not throwing more and more money at it.

@Beautifulblues

leaving aside the state of the NHS & what should be done, as that wasn't your question.

Your Mum is 64, about the age a lot of people start needing the NHS more, not less! So I've no idea why you think she's benefitted & now thinks you & DS shouldn't!

whether she's right or wrong about the NHS, I think you taking it personally is madness!

Education needs reform

The NHS needs reform

Social care needs reform

The privatised utilities bleeding us dry need reform

Privatised train and bus services need reform

The Tories have left everything to stagnate and filled the pockets of their cronies, as well as their own, intead of using the money they're siphoning off overseas to make any kind of difference here.

The NHS could be improved if social care was well funded and carers paid what they were worth

This would free up acute hospital beds, thereby preventing bed blocking, which in turn causes bottlenecks in A&Es up and down the country

Where’s the funding coming from? Who is paying more

That was to Gingernaut

This is just lies and devalues the NHS.

I have worked as a repatriation agent arranging UK residents who have illness and accidents abroad back to the NHS and I can tell you right now the costs, deficit in care and profiteering done within insurance based health systems is shocking.

You think what you get now is bad, you have no fucking idea.

The grass is always greener people.

She's right. It isn't fit for purpose. And it isn't "wonderful". It may have many wonderful people but the system is screwed. For starters there are too many people in the country for the level of medical staff available. That's just basic maths and the fault rests with our government. They've screwed it but don't pretend it's wonderful. There are many faults including waste. Change is massively needed.

She may have a valid point. Immigrants have increased population size, which presumably in the short-term puts pressure on all parts of the economy that can't adjust to increased demand quickly. UK population has increased by 9 million over the last 20 years. By contrast, in the previous 20 years the increase was only 3 million.

Of course Australia spends on less than the UK on healthcare in total! Their population is less than half the size of ours.

However, Australian spends more on healthcare per capita (i.e. per person).

www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/154e8143-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/154e8143-en

Firstly I just want to say how enormously I respect your role and the skills and sacrifice you put into it every day.

Completely appreciate your point about resources and preparedness, and this is exactly the kind of information that should be taken into account when decisions are being made about where to allocate funding and resource.
The inefficiencies I saw weren't anything to do with clinical practice, it was on the centralised business side of the organisation. The number of different consultancies being brought in (myself included!) at a cost of hundreds of thousands at a time to ask the same questions of the same people to get the same answers, and then for the reports and actions from the consultations to be shelved or forgotten because of another change of HoD or Minister with their own agenda, or pivot in focus... It was a shameful waste of money that would have been far better spent by trusts or hospitals on actually treating patients.

YANBU. My father was the same. He died, quite possibly would have been saved had he not voted to strip the NHS of its assets/voted for Brexit.

If a government I trusted proposed asking a group of genuine experts to look at a single payer universal social insurance model along the lines of those in some other European countries, I would listen carefully to the arguments. What I certainly wouldn't want would be the current midden of incompetents in government "reforming" anything. They'd just flog the assets to a party donor for peanuts and contract out the management of the resulting mess to Crapita....

@FixTheBone And that's why the country was in the mess it was when it came to covid- loads of PPE lying around not being used- yeh, who needs that-- gas storage containers? Nah we can flog those off for cash- !

It's the situation of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. No pre planning, no long term strategy's. And that's where many of our EU neighbours are streets ahead when it comes to true 'efficiency'