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.

What's that you say? Costs have gone up and service provision has gone down coinciding with an increased penetration of the private sector into NHS healthcare provision?

This isn't about training courses and non-jobs it is about systematic political mismanagement and the use of taxpayers money to fund profit making out of basic healthcare provision. But you keep blaming the lack of beds on the presence of a diversity and inclusion manager as if that is in anyway a rational position.

@CasperGutman I totally agree- we need a change of government and a true and proper look at ways things are done and in my opinion a pretty big reset button pressed

No one says how much they want people to pay and who

When some say the government are not funding properly what they mean is I want x group to pay more.

Your mum is right. The NHS is currently very poor and wr do need a system like the European system,

What they mean is that they want working people (Gen X, Millennials etc) to pay for them (boomers) to continue to have service provision through well-funded social care whilst moving to a health insurance model of provision for the generation that are paying and removal of benefits like the state pension fir that generation too.

The boomer generation at large have been all about voting for political parties that preserve their living standards by getting the generations after to pay more for less.

The political parties know they can't outright say this so they skirt around the issue and just make statements of need rather than clear policies.

But which European system do you want?

And if they haven't earned a wage yet, what are they supposed to pay with? It'll just be survival of the richest!

The Spanish public hospitals are good but the HCA type of care is supposed to come from your family. If you need this and family can't or won't do it then you can pay an hourly rate. How would we cope with this for our elderly relatives?

The NHS really does do healthcare efficiently, with a low spend and reasonable outcomes. It's very difficult to compare countries as the demographics matter a lot, but it's been tried and it's fourth now if you balance minimal cost with maximal outcome. It was first up until about 5 years ago

Hear hear.

I live in the Netherlands with an insurance system. We pay 250 euros per month for 3 people. That includes basic dental care, all hospital and doctors visits and medication with the exception of contraception. The deductible is 385 euros per year for adults. If you can not pay this you can get a subsidy, which covers almost all of the costs of the monthly payment and deductibles.

My grandparents pay this too. My grandmother had an operation today, after discovering her cancer is back. I am so glad that she is in the Netherlands and not the UK.

The idea that the elderly should somehow have a blanket exemption because they've paid into the system all their lives is risible. The majority take more out than they have ever put in! It should be based on need across the entire population.

The Dutch system is far from perfect, but I happily pay the money knowing I can get an ambulance within minutes if I needed one.

Would that charge be dependent on the individual’s state of health though? So for example if you develop a cancer would your monthly payments then increase?

The idea that the elderly should somehow have a blanket exemption because they've paid into the system all their lives is risible. The majority take more out than they have ever put in! It should be based on need across the entire population.

Its ludicrous. They retired a lot earlier than we will, half the women didn’t work full time… what’s this unblemished record of lifelong tax paying they keep banging on about?! Many of them will be retired for longer than they worked.

I want to pay more in return for a functioning system. I'm not a boomer though - I'm older Gen X.

But I want to pay into a bureaucracy-light system rather than one in which insurance companies and shareholders must get their cut. Despite the DM narrative, the UK's system spends much less on administrative costs than most others.

1. I think the NHS (or at least the principle of it ) is brilliant.
2. I know that there are many issues with it caused by various reasons from government underfunding, the changes in recruitment of nurses making it harder for applicants, to actual waste either of resources or money, to incompetence and cover ups in some cases. It's a massive organisation, it will have flaws.

However, you seem to be angry with your mum for wanting something you have no knowledge or understand of, and no intention of finding out. Why not learn more about the France system before getting angry? Is it because your mum must be in the wrong because her politics are so far away from yours?

Sounds fab, I would happily pay that.

I don’t want to pay more to NHS but I would to social care as I think once you solve that you fix a lot of the issues in NHS. I’m also fine with not changing the structure completely.

I also would like personal responsibility for health acknowledged. We are unhealthier than other countries and paying for that.

Nominal fees might put people off or it might help people value what they use. Are we so different to all the other countries that have nominal fees and do well?

No, the basic insurance costs the same for everyone. So if you have diabetes or cancer your premiums don't increase. Children are also 100% free. No deductible and free dental care too.

You can buy extra insurance for things like extra physio. You can get rejected for those or charged extra.

FIL is well past thirty years of retirement. MIL gave up work at 28 to raise two DC and never returned.

I broadly agree with you Marsha, and totally agree about social care.

I'm not wholly opposed to nominal charges, but I am not sure that they would really save that much (they add admin and enforcement costs) and may be a deterrent to seeking help. Possibly some of that is cultural expectations though, and I agree our public health education is woeful.

She has a right to a different opinion, just as you have a right to disagree with it…

And I bet she moans about ‘freeloaders’, ‘benefit scroungers’ and ‘foreigners using the NHS’ like mine does 😂

I don't know where you got this narrative but it's untrue.

This is a good point. I wonder if we would pay less taxes if we move over to a private health insurance scheme. For some reason I suspect we would still have to pay the same but in addition have to pay private healthcare

This isn't possible. NHS salaries at Trusts work on bandings based on the role on the person. You cant suddenly "negotiate" a role into a band higher than it is.

I don't agree that it should be privatised but the employees could be a bit bloody nicer to patients.