Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Frothy and Triumphant! Oh Come Lefties, Come Ye to anti ConDem-nay-tion!

[KateMiddlet0n]

Fed up of the ConDems robbing the poorest and most vulnerable blind? Sympathetic to the squeezed middle? Have you eyes that can see the horrors that await the dismantling of our welfare state and all that is great and good in UK?

Then you're a frother. This is our safe-space to rally, vent and get organised. You are also welcome if you want to be better informed and/or do something.

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This is our 4th thread now!

Yeah, 1984 keeps ringing in my head. The aspect that comes back to me the most is the way BB paraphrases everything, so that shocking abuses are packaged as A Good Thing and everybody buys into it

When I was working in Brazil, employers had control of what medical treatment staff should get, and when. I never found out much about it (I had insurance) but was stupefied to learn the boss decided when a worker was ill!

It seemed barbaric to me. Just goes how show how far (backwards) we've come in 15 years.

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Ah, OK, healthcare vouchers are already being piloted. They're called Personal Health Budgets.

I think at the moment they're for services like physiotherapy, but obviously once the system is up and running all services can be brought into the system.

Makes sense in a restructured/privatised healthcare system, where "NHS" is simply a brand name under which companies can pay to use.

The rhetoric to shoehorn them in will be the usual, "Phase 1: Don't worry, it's only minor services, you have nothing to complain about. Phase 2: we're expanding it to all services, but the principal is established so you have nothing to complain about."

What I can't find is how the amount of the voucher PHB is allocated. But once the PHB structure is in place it will become trivial to compare the amount each patient is getting, and then we'll see the "she's getting more than me" brigade we know so well ("Wah, your DC has riding therapy/one-to-one TA/priority parking. Me want!").

The word "fair" will doubtless be used to describe, er, giving everyone the same amount of healthcare... But that's OK, because people who are Genuinely Sick? can apply to, oh someone, and see if they can be allocated more vouchers.

Sorry, that's a rather loose summary.

"Health 'voucher' for NHS patients" Telegraph, 2008

Details, trials, bullshit and papers Personal Health Budgets, Dept of Health.

And I've seen support for this on MN from the usual NHS-haters.

LOOK The LSE blog here about disabled people and the media. Can you rt it from frothers ac Kate, am not on PC.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/12/14/disabled-people-media-attacks/

"shocking abuses are packaged as A Good Thing and everybody buys into it"

I'm anticipating lots of this with vouchers, which are being packaged as the tool of "personal choice".

But among the consequences will be the following.

It's psychologically hard to tell oneself, "Person X shouldn't have cancer treatment."

It's a lot easier to say, "Person X was given a budget and personal responsibility over it. If they've made poor decisions and run out of credit, that's sad but their own fault."

Which meshes all too well with the victim-blaming reactions to illness which are such a profound part of some people's psyche.

Cor, well spotted Mme. Hope you're OK now after chest pains.

Fuck me.

From that blog.

The researchers also carried out a number of focus groups asking what each group thought the level of disability benefit fraud was and found variations in responses from 50 to 70 per cent of all claims. In reality, the Office of National Statistics reports incapacity benefit fraud at just 0.03 per cent. The Department of Work and Pensions? own figures on Disability Living Allowance are 0.05 per cent. The media strategy appears to be working.

50 to 70%

Am ok. More shoulder/neck pains with the odd chest pain and shortness of breath. Think maybe chest infection so off to doc tomorrow to get checked

could be chest infection

could be pleurisy

get checked out, MMe

That is cheery, AF. Thanks.

:o

Hardly surprising when they're reading headlines like "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220211/Just-incapacity-benefit-claimants-genuine-tough-new-test-reveals-TWO-MILLION-cheating.html "Just one in six incapacity benefit claimants 'is genuine' as tough new test reveals TWO MILLION could be cheating"]], Daily Fail, 20 Oct 2009.

Glad you're going to doc, MmeL.

Bollocks. Try again:

"Just one in six incapacity benefit claimants 'is genuine' as tough new test reveals TWO MILLION could be cheating", Daily Fail, 20 Oct 2009.

Healthcare vouchers? oh great, we all know where this is going..

This is your budget, for your broken leg do you want a plastercast or crutches? Its your choice.

Your healthcare vouchers cover the cost of .. 0 treatments. Sorry, you will have to top up your healthcare voucher from your savings/ minimum wage job/ disabled living benefits.

we must have a cap on these health benefits, benefits spending is out of control

Disabled people cost £XYZ, more than someone on minimum wage!

..

if it makes you see the doc, I am happy, MMe

I bet I'm not wrong though < insider knowledge >

Have googled pleurisy and pneumonia but it is not that. Not as painful and no high temp. Think bad cold / chest infection and strained neck and shoulder from too much coughing.

Will go though. Don't want to be laid up at Xmas.

Link to a relevant story re:midwifery- NHS Wirral has recruited a private company to provide maternity care:-

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16072422

ok

as long as you are seeing the doc to rule it out

And it will be much easier to spend your vouchers in the private sector. Bye NHS, it was nice having you.

Lots of similar "public perception" figures on that Crimestoppers survey linked previously.

Which also has the following interesting statement:
"Benefit fraud was recently voted the third most worried about type of fraud by visitors to the Crimestoppers website during a poll hosted this year."

Well that's nice. Third out of how many options? Five. So, er, third from bottom, too.

Moreover. Check out this lovely summary of that Crimestoppers page:
"Not only was benefit fraud the third most worried about crime according to a Crimestoppers? survey, it also cost each of us £765 a year says research from the NFA 2011 Fraud Indicator," The Economic Voice, 5 Dec 2011.

That's not what the Crimestoppers site says. £765 is the figure for all fraud of all kinds. But benefit fraud and tax credit fraud are the only types named in the article - along with that figure. Clever piece of association.

Sorry I've been away. Had to take a break after someone misread a post on another thread, posted a patronising rant before two other, unrelated posters jumped into twist the knife without actually reading the thread (including one who claimed to be an expert on employment law but had forgotten her profile says something completely different) or backing up their points. I realise if you start feeling stably about injustices on Mumsnet all perspective is lost and it's time to take a break.

And breathe

Sorry MmeL I didn't see your note to put on Twitter. I'm on phone now but will post in the morning. It'll disappear at this time of night.

Tianc you make a lot of sense re healthcare vouchers.

SIOB.

That healthcare voucher thingy - a lot of the PCT's that are currently running trials are doing it for Long term Neurological conditions and MH conditions. The people who are LEAST able to sort out budgets for themselves, are being expected to.

Fuuuck. So, Basically, if it starts in my PCT, I'll be shafted. Because there is no Neuro here, I have to travel at LEAST 60 miles away to see one. Which would cost a LOT. (Which is why my PCT have refused for the last 2 years to 'let' me do choose and book with my out-of-area Neuro, despite the fact that there isn't a local one for me to see). So one visit to my Neuro would cost a bomb, and wouldn't leave enough probably for my epilepsy meds - especially if I have to start taking an adjunct again.

I can't take generic pills, it's a big problem for lots of people with epilepsy, PCT's refusing to prescribe branded pills, when the generics metabolise in a different way, and don't give the same level of seizure control, due to having a different half-life to branded anti-epileptic meds. I already have to fight my PCT for branded Gabapentin, let alone if I had to decide whether seeing the Neuro was more important if I only had a set budget.

Health care vouchers?

I'm boggling.

Will they expect dementia patients to use them?

Robert Fisk article Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.

I wish people could understand this. I do mean "could" and I'm not implying everyone's dense or anything. It's just that we've all been taught to believe money represents worth, and encouraged to think of the national economy as like a household budget.

Money doesn't represent worth, it represents power (that lies behind the SAHM complaint). Nations and big businesses aren't like households, because their money supply is not limited to what somebody else chooses to let them have. They can just make it up.

The only people whose money represents real stuff are us, the serfs. Our public money used to represent real stuff, like overseas properties and parks and industrial know-how. That all went away ages ago. Now it's just made up; the bosses may as well write each other chits saying "I give you the right to screw my wife (or my electorate) if you'll take care of my nice lifestyle." I had some success explaining this to my mother - for the first time, after many attempts - using this chap's example about how your mortgage is a real debt for you, but a book asset for the bank. She suddenly got why they'd all been so keen to lend squillions to "sub-prime" customers who could never pay.

Just as the nation gets painfully to grips with the fact that WE are now being sold, by a government that's run out of tangible assets and power, the Northern Rock farrago keeps bubbling away in the background. I really hope some clever journalists decide to back up the Auditor .. and to explain to people why this happens, and what it means.