AIBU to ask if you believe that a labour government will go some way to fixing the NHS?

[TabithaTwitchel]

I'm not a labour voter but I could potentially be persuaded for obvious reasons right now

I'd like to believe a new government could do 'something' to stem the rot in the NHS. But I'm not convinced.

Do you think it will help?

I'd happily part pay for something that doesn't feel like a third world country.

I’d happily pay more tax for it. If we spent as much on healthcare as our European neighbours we wouldn’t be in such a mess.

I’d happily pay more tax for it. If we spent as much on healthcare as our European neighbours we wouldn’t be in such a mess.

But, as I understand it, it's not just about more money. The part pay model reduces waste as there's fewer no-show appointments. I think it was Germany where posters said the local hospitals compete against each other so the underperforming ones have to improve or face having no patients.

It's not just pouring more money into the pit. Average life expectancy was 70 when the NHS was founded and it's now 81. We have an ageing population and proportionally shrinking working age population to pay for it. It's not going to cut the mustard which is why our European neighbours have different systems.

@AmpleFatball

I never implied the tories were fiscally responsible 🤔 🤷‍♀️

No. The issue with the NHS isn’t just funding. It’s badly managed.

It needs reform for sure but it also needs more money. After 14 years of underfunding there’s a lot of catching up needed.

Yes. Yes yes.
The tories have all but destroyed the nhs.
Labour set it up and fully funded it under Blair.

Keir will want a legacy. He will fund it.

I think you could pour an infinite amount of money into the NHS and it wouldn’t sort anything.
The whole system is fucked!

They’ll ‘fix’ the NHS. Like they did in the mid 2000s with the PFIs. Those terrible and dodgy deals now cost the taxpayer billions more than if Labour had not let their cronies rip off the taxpayer. So yes they’ll fix the NHS with more dodgy deals that will need to be paid for by future governments and generations, leading to a faster collapse of the NHS.

Labour always make bad decisions for short term gain which lead to long term economic decline. The last Tory government being atrocious doesn’t absolve labour of this and wipe their record clean.

By the way how do you fix a system that is held up in a broken economy where less than half the people are net contributers. More than half are not paying enough into the system to sustain their use of public services.

As the number of net contributors reduces year on year, who do you think is going to most to fix the NHS?

When you say that less than half of people are net contributors, have you included the value generated by their work?

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2009/dec/14/new-economics-foundation-social-value

Nope.

but then realistically no party with have the funds or the expertise for the job. I just refuse to vote for a party that think women are secondary to men being women. So labour is out for me ( and always have been tbh)

...and who manages the NHS? ultimately its the Govt of the day! they set the funding, have a minister & a department!
IF its badly managed thats on them, not least on privatising so many aspects of the NHS.

Just duplicates so many functions.

But the bottom line is that demand has gone through the roof, we can no longer get equivalently trained staff from the EU & staff are leaving, either abroad or uk private healthcare.

On funding, there are plenty of the very wealthy who can easily afford changes to CGT or a wealth tax and we'd still be in the lower half of G20 on overall tax rates.

There is zero reason why Sunak should pay 20% on millions of investment income but a nurse pays far more (tax and NI)

This is not how the economy works. We cannot pay for imports and pay for public services with ‘well being’, as the article measures economic value.

It takes cold hard cash to buy things. Either taxed, borrowed or printed. The borrowing and printing has led to rampant inflation in the last two years. There was no magic money tree after all.

And taxed money will also eventually run out as the number of net contributors plummets.

This net contributors argument is bullshit.

The people who do make net contributions via tax can only do so as they are part of a society that enables them to do so

And taxed money will also eventually run out as the number of net contributors plummets.

Yes. The decline is wholly attributed to Tory mismanagement but we've had more than a decade of demographic change. An ageing population = more healthcare spending needed for an elderly population and fewer net contributors of working age.

Yet the wealth of the richest continues unabated... strange that.

What your point?

And what does it have to do with fiscal mechanisms.

No I don't.believe in Starmer's good faith, even less ln the Party's. Starmer has a history of saying one thing and then reneging on it. Improve the NHS will probably mean more diversity equality and inclusion.ie women will lose the right to single sex spaces and to receive intimate care from women. Ta ta! The NHS is improved.

The Labour Party is incognisable as the Labour Party I grew up with. It is choking on an ideology which is absurd.

Quote from full fact:

Of this figure, an estimated £57 billion will be paid for projects that began under a Labour government and the remaining £21 billion on projects started under Conservative or Coalition governments.
This only factors in PFI contracts that are still operational.

https://fullfact.org/online/pfi-nhs-cost-labour/#:~:text=Of%20this%20figure%2C%20an%20estimated,contracts%20that%20are%20still%20operational.

The Truss budget cost £30 billion overnight.

I'd rather have the hospitals.

Blair was responsible for sneaking privatisation in through the back door. He is responsible for the current commissioning and PFI shambles.

they closed wards and prestigious research units. That’s where the funding came from. Then funnily enough eventually what was left, after coping for a while, collapsed. Huge money saving depts like the poisons unit were defunded.

labour’s ethos was actually to “fully fund” the nhs, so they could prove the model didn’t work and they could move to private. They also spent a shit ton of money on IT systems and useless crap, again, to waste money to show the nhs model wouldn’t work.

i was approached to set my department up as a private unit, which they would then contract back to the nhs. In the end they just closed it.

I hope this government can do better, but I don’t think it’s a lab/cons thing. It’s putting someone in charge to do a proper review and overhaul. Spend money on staff, not computers and paint.

NHS needs a rethink and overhaul. Patients living longer, abuse happening of systems.

Processes are not streamlined. Chucking money at staff for overtime is not a sustainable solution. Staff already work extra.

it’s a longterm plan, but they need to invest in the nhs long term plan and train staff they need and ensure there are development and retention opportunities available to keep the staff.

But more reports and strategies will happen. NHS staff will spend time and resources to align to new policies. The. A change in direction.

That’s a load of old bollocks. I was working in the NHS during that time. It was the golden age. The current commissioning shambles was the product of Lansley’s 2012 bill that upended the NHS structure, cost a fortune, transferred public health out of the service into local government and made competitive contracting for services compulsory. The amount of money wasted in the restructure and the successive 12 years of tendering is eye watering. Hopefully a new government will undo it.

You’re confusing PFIs with quantative easing. The two are completely separate.

The impact of Truss budget, though serious, was short term and reversed within 3 months. Interest rates have gone up because of all the money printing during Covid to pay for the unnecessary lockdowns. Not because of Truss policies which lasted all of five minutes. Truss’ actions were stupid, but they’re used a shield by everyone who was for lockdown and spending £1 trillion pounds to pay people people to sit at home and watch Netflix. Now those same people don’t want admit that they were wrong.

PFIs are an example of long term damage done through corrupt practices by the last labour government.

I think there's a better chance of Labour improving the NHS than the Tories - though I don't have the optimism I had in 1997.

However, two points -

1. I don't think comparisons with Wales are completely fair or helpful - Wales has it's own issues with an older population with higher levels of poor health, and the Welsh Government in the past chose to put more money into social care. Things seemed to have changed now but for a long time social care, while being in dire straits, was not in as bad a situation as in England.
2. On English Labour councils in general, the Tories have deliberately underfunded them - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/21/exclusive-labour-councils-in-england-hit-harder-by-austerity-than-tory-areas