Protect the bloody NHS again

[bathsh3ba]

Is anyone else sick of hearing this? Maybe, if health systems everywhere are failing to manage this virus, we should start to accept that it's not feasible for a publicly funded health service to be all things to all people. It can't treat every ailment or save every life because there just isn't the money for the staff or beds or equipment to do that. Especially when the furlough bill comes home to roost.

[LastTrainEast]

@bathsh3ba

Is anyone else sick of hearing this? Maybe, if health systems everywhere are failing to manage this virus, we should start to accept that it's not feasible for a publicly funded health service to be all things to all people. It can't treat every ailment or save every life because there just isn't the money for the staff or beds or equipment to do that. Especially when the furlough bill comes home to roost.

I'm sick of hearing people who don't understand what it means whine about it if that helps.

Couldn't you just read the responses to the last 50 people who said it?

[Jaxhog]

And Op, who would you like to select to die?

[frumpety]

If the issue is that the NHS can’t cope then the Government, who is in charge of it, failings need addressing. The Government built the Nightingales specifically to cope with Covid so they need to get them fully reopened and operating, and provide the staff to work in them from the additional 50,000 nurses they promised in their manifesto last year.

Is that what you meant @laidbacklife ?

[Bambooble]

You even acknowledged that all health services are concerned, so although the NHS is underfunded and largely mismanaged, many countries are also locking down to protect their healthcare services.

[WiseUpJanetWeiss]

@laidbacklife

Yes, sick to the back teeth of hearing it. If the issue is that the NHS can’t cope then its failings need addressing. They built the Nightingales specifically to cope with Covid so get them fully reopened and operating.

Who will staff them?

[NerrSnerr]

They built the Nightingales specifically to cope with Covid so get them fully reopened and operating.

To be able to staff the Nightingales the NHS will have to reduce other services. There are not enough of us to go around. There are many of us in the NHS who have been working flat out since the whole thing started in March and although we are lucky to be in stable work it is exhausting.

[FAE18]

You absolute tool.

[Mumski45]

What do you think will happen if the NHS is not protected. What shall we do? Refuse to treat coronavirus patients? They won't be turned away so we need to plan for the fact that they will soon turn up in great numbers. Or do you think we should be turning them away?

The 'NHS' is actually an organisation of individuals most of whom are trying to do the best they can- yes even the management without whom the organisation would be chaotic.

Who do you think makes sure the right services are put in the right place. Makes the decisions on how to spend scarce resources. Manages the finances and makes sure everyone gets paid. Looks at services for prevention rather than cure?


If we don't minimise the numbers getting seriously ill and needing hospital treatment do you really think life would just go on as normal. How would you feel when A & E needs to shut and emergencies are turned away, hospitals surgeries and ambulances can't run as normal as their staff are off sick or in a MH crisis. Then other emergency services like the fire service and police numbers are also reduced- then what happens.

Whether you like it or not our health system underpins our economy and life as we know it. No it's not perfect but at the moment it's what we've got.

We don't like paying more tax. Has any government won an election by saying they are going to tax us enough to put it right?

At the moment the NHS is restricted by Human Resources as much as financial resources so yes we need to protect those people we already have willing to do a very difficult job and I have the greatest respect for each and every one of them.

[WorriedMummy2020]

Glad to see the OP is getting a roasting on here.
OP protect the 'bloody' NHS so when you (and all of us!) need it, it can deliver.

[SheepandCow]

@MelodramPatheticism

The NHS spends its money on keeping thousands of people alive who are in minimally conscious states, in pain and with no quality of life.

Care home fees for people on NHS continuing care are around £800 a week. Some patients will live 10+ years.

Is it fair for children, young people and the working population to be expected to go without tests, treatment and care in order for patients with no quality of life to be forced to remain alive?

The current pandemic is bringing things into sharp focus.

What do you suggest?

Encourage our children to start smoking and eat lots of cake when they turn 18?
You know, so that they don't reach such an old age?

We can't tell people not to smoke 'because it shortens your life expectancy' and then complain because they stopped smoking and er didn't die.

[Sweeetcornbananaf]

There is the money to fund the service it’s a choice. The Tories are choosing to strangle the NHS.

[frumpety]

Yep damned if they give health advice , so eat healthily and don't smoke , pickle your liver, and damned if they do , Bastards ! increasing the life expectancy of the population with all your advice and new fangled treatments, who is going to pay for it ....... ? Bloody NHS

[SheepandCow]

@Sweeetcornbananaf

There is the money to fund the service it’s a choice. The Tories are choosing to strangle the NHS.

Helped by the Blair and Brown governments. Remember PFI? Both parties are to blame.

[TheFairyGarden]

OP we can open as many hospitals as we like but if we don’t have the staff to man them then it’s counter productive using it?

Why not concentrate on doing what you can to help save our NHS?

[TheFairyGarden]

Should say isn’t it

[DameFanny]

@IndiaMay

I think people are naive thinking covid will over run and destroy the NHS. We cannot have a first world national health service without a first world economy. With continuing lockdowns and 'the roolz' we wont have an economy able to support the NHS anyway. No doubt people will cry 'it's the Tories!' Without using their critical thinking and realising that if hundreds of people loose their jobs, businesses close and no ones paying nation insurance or taxes then where the hell is the money to fund the NHS we sacrificed so much in the name of saving

How about you use your critical thinking and realise that an uncontrolled pandemic will kill off business anyway. There are no good answers, just slightly less shit ones. We missed the opportunity to control infections, the government spunked 12 billion in outsourced track and trace (and keep calling it NHS when it's no such thing) and now we are where we are - our best hope is still the NHS, and we need to do all we can - stay home, don't be a dick - to keep it going.

[cbt944]

@MelodramPatheticism

That's not what 'eugenics' means actually.

Like hell is isn't.

The idea that in a pandemic, the lives of those ‘with underlying health conditions’ are dispensable or worth less than those without ‘underlying health conditions’ is – again – totally repugnant to anyone in possession of a moral compass.

Most people are rightly appalled by the utterly heartless eugenicist and social Darwinistic ideology and thought they’d seen the end of it several decades ago. But it’s back and ‘mainstreamed’ – and in the long run it arguably poses as big a threat to society as the wretched coronavirus itself.

//www.rt.com/op-ed/484696-eugenics-social-darwinism-coronavirus/

[paintmywholehousecobweb]

So fucking fund it properly then Boris you Tory wanker!

[southeastdweller]

I'm interested to see if anyone can come up with a link that strongly indicates that the NHS is at risk of collapsing because of Covid - I've not seen that so far this year on Mumsnet.

Anyone follow Allison Pearson on Twitter? This afternoon she tweeted that of 21,000 hospitalised patients in the capital, just 8% of them have Covid.

[NerrSnerr]

I completely agree that the NHS needs a shitload more funding but in the short term it won't help. There are no staff on standby waiting for jobs to appear- there are not enough doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to go around. We can't effectively treat Covid and everything else with the staff available.

[AlexaShutUp]

The NHS is far from perfect, but take it for granted at your peril.

Having lived in countries that don't have universal access to healthcare, I really value what we have in the NHS. Yes, it needs to be better funded and more efficiently managed, but it's certainly worth protecting in my view.

[SheepandCow]

Good post @cbt944

The slippery slope towards growing support for fascist eugenics began with Tony Blair. His war on the disabled.

welfareweekly.com/tony-blair-destroyed-britains-faith-benefits-system-claim-researchers/

This bit jumps out. It put us on the path towards seeing disabled, and later elderly people, as expendable.

Researchers claim that during the 1980’s and most of the 1990’s the majority of people believed that benefit payments were too low, causing severe hardship among the poorest in society, and should be increased.

However, after 1999 a growing number of people adopted the view that benefits were too generous and should be cut. It was around this time that a resurgence in the derogatory ‘scrounger’ rhetoric, more akin to Dickensian Britain, began to resurface and has continued ever-since.

[frumpety]

the government spunked 12 billion in outsourced track and trace (and keep calling it NHS when it's no such thing)

Glad you brought that up @DameFanny, isnt it run by the NIHP ? which according to wiki is an impending UK government body ?

[DameFanny]

Allison Pearson is not a disinterested or trustworthy source

[ThousandsAreSailing]

The NHS has been underfunded for years. Compared to other comparative countries we have fewer ICU beds, doctors and nurses
A person who is going to die of covid, or recover covid but hospitalised, takes weeks, on average, to do that. That means they need a hospital bed for a long time. We all want a hospital bed when we need one so the spread needs to be levelled out. The NHS Trust I work for is very concerned and expecting this round to be worse that the last
The government has failed us with poor planning, a failed track and trace and lack of trust