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?

Dear god, it’s like QAnon UK - there are multiple data sources, including the NHS’s own figures that show it was better off under Labour - but yes it is a huge conspiracy to….. what? What do you actually think would be achieved?

You seem to have an axe to grind....

Under all the previous Govts own measures, the NHS is doing worse than ever before & by 2015, was missing all the targets that they themselves had set....

Hunt has spent some considerable time explaining why when he was chair of the health committee... staff and funding.

Talking about whistle blowing, have we all read consultant Peter Duffy's book "Whistle in the Wind" about how he was hounded out of the NHS because of whistle blowing and reporting some of his incompetent and lazy colleagues. Nice that, get rid of the innocent and protect the lazy/incompetent. It's a must read for anyone in any doubt as to the reality of the NHS management.

We weren’t talking about whistleblowing. We were talking about the deterioration of the NHS since 2010. Some of us know first hand about NHS management. We know you hate it and never miss an opportunity to criticise every aspect of it @taxguru.

The NHS negligence didn't kill any of your parents or in-laws then?

The NHS didn't misdiagnose and fob off your OH for several years missing clear signs of cancer then?

I have good reasons for my opinion of the NHS.

The NHS would be better placed to support all our friends and relatives if it was properly funded. It's not a homogeneous being out to get anyone.

My bias is all about the way statistics are manipulated.

They are manipulated. I've had a long term chronic condition since childhood so have been an NHS outpatient for 40 odd years. I don't think I've ever seen my actual wait time recorded - nearly always an hour despite having the first appointment of the clinic but recorded as 5-10 minutes. And that's only the faux stats I've seen, there must be many more.

And yes, my NHS treatment was equally crappy under Labour governments. Please let someone be brave enough to move us to the part-pay European healthcare systems.

How did you see your wait time recorded @march2 ? Was it written on your records? Interested because I haven't seen anything for myself.

I doubt i'd be very happy either..... but the point is the NHS finds and cures many many different types of cancers, very successfully.... but the UK lags way behind European countries on treatment times and outcomes.

Why? lack of scanners, staff, long waits for diagnostic tests.... all caused by lower funding than European healthcare systems.

How would changing the funding model make any difference to the length of time you spend in the waiting room? The targets never included time from arrival to being seen anyway and, as far as I know, aren’t and weren’t recorded.

Yes. They will introduce euthanasia and kill all the expensive people off.

Won't be like that at first, but we will quickly go the way of Canada considering killing off the mentally ill or the poor.

Wes Streeting, of all people, ironically knows this.

Yes I think Labour will improve the NHS.
Although I think some degree of part-paying for some things (as we already do with areas like dentistry) are fine.
I had treatment in Sweden a few years ago and paid something like £25 fee and from then on, it was covered by EHIC. Presumably something similar in the UK would exclude people who can't pay.

What’s ironic about Wes Streeting “knowing it”? I can’t see any irony myself.

I hope the assisted dying bill’s passed. It’s madness to deny terminally ill people choice.

Going back to OPs original question, yes actually I do think it will improve under Labour. Wes Streeting is one of the few cabinet ministers that I think will make a difference. I understand he's being advised by Alan Milburn (former health SOS) who wasn't adverse to using the private sector alongside the NHS.

I agree with this

But once you start adding fees to GP visits you are fundamentally changing the NHS it is not longer the NHS its a different healthcare system and how do you separate those who can and can't pay. The have managed this with dental care but what has happened is many people can not not afford the required dental care they need

£25 to many is fine, two adults needing to see a GP and a reduced amount for their children lets say £10, two adults two children needing to see their GP in a week that £90 plus possible prescription fees many people simply can not afford this who are working and not receiving any benefits, While I am all for changing the model as the NHS is no longer working and hasn't for many years it can't be by adding a few fees here and there it has to be a very well structed change but this will come with a backlash from the public. Lets hope Labour is brave enough to carry this through.

I agree euthanasia will be introduced in the UK soon, which I do support. I would like to believe this is purely down to ethical reasons but it is not its practical reasons too

The issue I have with paying for a GP is that I refuse to pay for crap service.

I am not willing to pay £25 for the service I currently receive - always late, rude and rushing to get you out of the door. And that’s if you are lucky enough to get an actual doctor not a PA.

I would (and already do) pay for private GPs instead.

Don't people pay in Ireland?

It probably stands a better chance than the Tories would have done if only because any proposals won't have the more hysterical commentators on the left (looking at you Guardian) yelling their heads off about "privatising the NHS" (whatever that might actually mean).

The funding model is not the issue, part-pay, private or through taxation it's just a method of funding..Method of funding has no correlation to outcomes (there are international comparisons on this). Overall funding per head of population matters, and we don't benchmark that well on that. What also matters is the thorny demographic issue and the wider determinants of health. Bluntly we've got older and sicker (at a population level) and we are going to get more old people (as a percentage of the total population) and everyone is going to be sicker (obesity levels and poor mental health increases). Even if we just kept the same level of service the increased numbers of people with need suggest eye watering increased costs. If you want to improve the offer and meet demand well.... Which is why we need to move to prevention. But this is deeply unpopular (nanny state, food manufacturers bleating about profits, no one wanting to support minimal wage/good jobs and secure housing) and initially very expensive as you have to double run. By which I mean invest in prevention in addition to dealing with the historic backlog of people with high healthcare needs. The general public mostly think someone else should pay and mostly (at a population level) want the freedom to make consumer choices and are in denial about the consequences. Will labour get tough on the reforms in our food chain and sort housing and job security whilst increasing funds for more scanners, staff and appointments...I highly doubt it. The public can't tolerate a Scandinavian system. Even after today's tax rises we are likely to still be middle of the pack in terms of total tax take and if we compare to mist of Europe still the low end. But most people think we are over taxed....

Yes we do. A GP visit is about €60 (so £50 roughly).

There are medical cards available as well as GP cards. The former cover everything, the latter GP visits. Children under 8 and people over 70 automatically get a GP card. There is also means testing for GP and medical cards. In addition, there is a long term illness scheme which covers some conditions.The A and E charge is €100 unless you have a medical card or are referred by a GP in which case it’s free (but you’ll usually have paid for GP of course). And in some emergencies you don’t have time for a GP…

There is a large ‘squeezed middle’ who find it difficult to pay and some will postpone visits to the doctor as a result. Lots of people in this category do pay for private insurance too in case of serious illness/hospital visits. You can usually see a consultant more quickly if you pay privately than if you’re in the public system…which isn’t at all fair but that’s the way it is here.

What IS needed is proper competition, not the crazy illogical mess of the "internal market" and trusts that we're stuck with at the moment.

Proper competition where you can take your money and choose which GP, or which hospital you want to be treated in, whether NHS or private. I.e. where you can "co-pay" for private treatment by paying extra over and above what the NHS will pay.

A bit like dentistry and opticians. Where you can get some things "free" or cheap on the NHS (because the NHS pays the dentist/optician), but you can pay extra for better fillings, or a specific type of dental bridge (not funded by the NHS), or with opticians, where a child can get a basic pair of NHS glasses provided, or the parents can choose to pay extra for something better.

Similarly, a real choice if you need a scan or x-ray. Happy to wait, then wait for the local hospital, but if you want it quicker and willing to put yourself out, then you can get it quicker at a hospital a couple of hours away. Genuine competition to make the hospital offer a better service, i.e. the one who can do it quicker gets the business and money, the local one who can't, lose "your custom".

It's exactly what was hoped for with various previous attempts at competition, but, as usual, it was made to fail by vested interests, etc. I hope Streeting graps the nettle and looks at some of the pretty good ideas attempted in the past, and other ideas from other successful state healthcare models, and actually makes real change happen.

And no, it's not all about money. Far too much has been wasted on failed initiatives etc., Reform does cost money and that money needs to be put in, but it needs to be dependant upon change and improved results. Any fool can throw a few extra tens of billions at the NHS and results WILL inevitably improve, but the past has shown such improvements weren't proportional to the extra spending, hence a lot of it was lost to waste and inefficiency.

How did you see your wait time recorded @march2 ? Was it written on your records? Interested because I haven't seen anything for myself.

Yes, there was a form they filled in (and I think I signed it). Can't remember whether I then took it into the consultant but I definitely saw what they'd written for wait times. Presumably they recorded it for some statistical use somewhere along the line or they wouldn't have bothered.

I won't go into them not bothering to tell me about appointments they cancelled until I arrived. And then having to speak to the consultant's secretary as they couldn't automatically rebook it. This is at one of the leading London hospitals.

My private healthcare is a total joy by comparison.

Yes, there was a form they filled in (and I think I signed it). Can't remember whether I then took it into the consultant but I definitely saw what they'd written for wait times

I've never experienced this in any of my hospital visits for myself or family or friends. I wonder if anyone else has on this thread. It doesn't seem like a reliable way to get statistics since they're clearly not doing it at all hospitals.

It may not be used at all hospitals (though this is one of the big London hospitals). My only point was that I've seen manipulation of data first hand, not whether this data is collected or used elsewhere.

More generally, it's really not that hard to manipulate statistics and I'd be amazed if it doesn't go on in the NHS. Stats aside, my experience in the NHS for my chronic condition has been poor under both Labour and Conservative governments, certainly not the halcyon days that others remember.

Some of my friends are current and ex-NHS consultants and they also think it's broken. I really hope Labour looks at how healthcare is delivered in Germany and France.

Healthcare delivery in France, let alone Germany is incredibly complicated and very admin heavy.

Both countries spend far more per head of population than the UK does and they have done over decades.

People are up in arms over NI rises for business, if we had a French German HC system, they'd be paying far more.

Love it that Hunt is doing the media shows, telling us all how he would have done things differently....... yet no one is asking him who gave this state affairs after 14 years of his party in Govt.