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?

No because I think any real improvement will take years to show

Anyone thinking "lifestyle choice" changes would save us, you might want to rethink
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68425021

The NHS is beyond recovery in its current form. Like that other socialist leviathan the welfare state, it was built on the wrong premise.
Nye Bevan believed that giving people free health care from the cradle to the grave would make us all healthier. The opposite has occurred, people do not take responsibility for their own health, why should they when the state will pick up the tab. So as a society we are getting sicker and making greater demands on the system.
Until people realise that socialism and its great state institutions don't work we will continue to decline as a country

Have the statistics got rose tinted glasses?

Depends who's providing them, @Blossomtoes

We've had at least four of these waiting time graphs on recent threads, all widely differing, and as we all know stats can be manipulated to prove anything depending on how whatever-it-is gets counted

We won’t be doing PFI again anyway to provide a period of spend now pay way more later

Those private mark ups are too big

Plus general context

yes. that's why they got rid of the targets because people were just fixing them anyway (if you read any books by those working in a&es back then they all mention fudging the numbers).

You also can't compare 2008 and 2023, we are living in a world where the NHS was crippled by a pandemic for 2 years resulting in loss of staff and a huge backlog of waiting times we are catching up with. Add that to an aging population and increasing population and those 15 years are worlds apart.

I'm not saying the NHS now is good...it is 100% NOT and it needs major reform but every time it is even brought up people cry and scream that we don't want an Americanised system (even though we are a loooong way from that). I am saying people seem to look back on the NHS during Labour times and think it was great when it was already nearing collapse then.

The NHS will do better under labour. It always has.
Plus I only have to look back to how the NHS was before the last 13 years of tory rule to know that. I worked for the NHS and have also been a very regular patient so have experienced it from both sides.
We are in such a poor state now that improvement will take time but I whole heartedly believe that labour can and will make the NHS better.
I watched Ambulance on BBC last night and the horrific waits for treatment for many people with chronic and acute illness is beyond belief in the 6th richest nation in the world.
But of course Mumsnet thinks the problem is all down to waste and inefficiency. 13 years of austerity and real time cuts have nothing to do with it.

We won’t be doing PFI again anyway to provide a period of spend now pay way more later

Let's hope not @EasternStandard ... doubtless there'll be endless new "schemes" presented in the light of a second coming, but I don't see that being one of them

Nope they will scratch the surface maybe - a few platitudes and fling a few million at getting waiting lists down but I have no faith in Starmer or a Labour government- so much so I’ve left the UK for good as I can see the writing on the wall and don’t want any part of what is coming for the UK. Decades of underinvestment won’t be reversed and people who parrot what Labour did when they came to power last time are living a fantasy - we are so far from where we were then go where we are now l. Both DH and I were higher rate tax payers and neither could stomach paying into a failing system anymore when we got fuck all back - crumbling health, schools, water systems, bankrupt councils and shit local services due to cutbacks.

It’s interesting when people talk about Labour not using private

PPP was and is the epitome of transferring tax payers’ money to private investors via huge mark ups

And off the gov books, incredible really that people get misty eyed about it. You wouldn’t about paying that much more for anything else

The stats, regardless of source, are unarguable. Waiting times fell dramatically in the first decade of this century and were already at record high levels before the pandemic. The NHS wasn’t haemorrhaging staff then either. I worked in the NHS during those years - six of them in a district general hospital - we genuinely reached the A&E target 98% of the time and there were periods when we had an empty waiting room. Frankly I’m getting very tired of people here rewriting history. Why?

Brown/Blair had to treble NHS funding to make it "much better". They won't be able to do that this time.

I have my criticisms of the Labour Party but everyone sees that they'll inherit a poisoned chalice. That said, I don't for a minute think they will be as incompetent, uncaring or as shambolic as another Tory government would.

You would be surprised. You think Labour support women?

We are currently living in a raging bin fire. When Labour come in it will be like some one has chucked a can of petrol in.

We are truly fucked.

Having been waiting since 2019 for an appointment following a GP referral in Labour controlled Wales I have very little confidence that anything will improve.

My Grandmother was a contemporary of Nye Bevan and as far back as the late 70’s when she died she would muse on how far away from their initial vision the NHS had become and could never be sustainable.

If by "fixing" you mean scrapping it completely (which is absolutely what needs to happen), then sadly my answer would be "no".

It needs to be taken out of politics permanently. There's a consensus in the country for it, but governments are too short-term and ideological to take care of it. We need a brave government to set up a cross-party, multi stakeholder committee that will set longer term strategies and goals, with funding guaranteed over the long term.

There also needs to be wholesale reform of how it operates, procures, what treatments, working with private healthcare etc., but that can't happen while it's a political football. The general health of our workforce depends on it, so it needs to be dealt with.

King’s Fund says otherwise. Here is a graph showing the percentage annual change in real terms spending on the NHS:

IMO the trouble is within the NHS, not only the funding.

It really needs to start from scratch, the inefficiencies are astounding, but that's such a huge piece of work and would require such enormous investment short term, I'm not sure the public would support it. The staff certainly wouldn't

They didn’t. They doubled it - it make up for 18 tears of Tory underfunding.

@Minkyfalinkinky I don't know what you are even talking about.

I really hope so. They’ve done it before so I’m hopeful they’ll be able to do it again. It’ll take a long time though.

@Calculuses typical old Tory argument. Blame managers , blame incompetence. It's all crap. The NHS has been reorganised almost every 3-4 years for decades. Each time the messages further the aims of whatever political party. Chucking out Tory messages of inefficiencies fool no one these days-the problem is lack of cash, and really you know it, even if it doesn't suit your political purpose to acknowledge it.

You think there are no inefficiencies?

And you've made my point exactly, the tinkering doesn't help, it needs completely re structuring

How is it a racist comment if it’s a fact? African based agencies have filled the gap Brexit left -no European nurses anymore.

Care homes, and to a lesser extent NHS wards, are recruiting via these agencies and particularly for “carers”, not much is needed to get employed. I’ve worked in several care homes so have seen this with my own eyes.

Anyone thinking young lads in Nigeria and other African/Indian countries are sitting there thinking “working with people with dementia in a foreign country is my dream” is kidding themselves. They are doing it to get a visa full stop.

Local people don’t want this type of work because it’s very poorly paid and soul destroying- who wants to get kicked, spat on, bitten etc for 12 hours a day when they can make more money doing night fill in a supermarket - but overseas workers cannot get a visa to come and do that type of work.

I’ve been an HCP for over 30 years and worked in all different sectors. I don’t need to watch TV programs to know the reality of what is happening on the ground.