To those of you who dont believe this govenment is evil read this.

You call that last government left wing? About as much so as Kelvin Etuhu.

 

I rest my case, Oh go on then, how many NHS doctors use the NHS themselves? The Tories lining up their American friends' medical companies to fall over each other coming over here to fill their boots.

 

Beat me to it. I'm no apologist for the last Govt they did good things and got things badly wrong as well, but to try to put that forward as an excuse for this set of b'stards now in power would laughable if it wasn't so serious.

 

cant see it happening,i doubt even these cnuts would try and push this through.

 

Wouldn't want to, 'can't afford to know you my my arse,

 

Imagine the health service remodelled along the shambles that is the privatised railways. Yes we would love to deliver your operation unfortunately it's not cost effective but we can give you another operation for something that you don't need in a different location how about Bulgaria is that ok.

 

Scrap the NHS, the decision will be unpopular to start with but it will be a huge benefit to the health and finances of the country, and be another incentive for people to work. Of course there will be people who can't afford treatment - this will be paid for by charities with this, effectively free, treatment being on a par with the NHS.

It's not that the NHS is bad in principle, it's just that it's grown to be a huge mess that is about as inefficient as you can get and therefore a massive drain on the economy with a poor return. It has no competition and can basically write blank cheques to itself.

Look at the railways - privatisation was ridiculed yet the service offered before was so bad that hardly anyone used it. Now more people use trains than have ever used them before (despite the fact tickets can be very expensive), they've never been as punctual, and using them is generally a pleasant experience.

 

I agree where 'New Labour' are concerned but my point was that there are a lot of left leaning posters on here who blame the present government, and the right in general, for everything.

 

Our NHS currently treats more people and better than ever before. It makes mistakes but these, though often high profile and ideologically exploited by the mainly right wing media, are at a small and internationally favourable level.

I both work in it and have been through emergency intervention by the NHS twice in the last year. The care and professionalism of the NHS, I have no doubt was better than anything I received in France whilst living there.

The NHS is also demonstrably efficient by international comparisons, particularly when you take out the several billions that are included in its expenditure to service the quasi-market system (which all governments of the last 35 years, with the exception of a brief period when Frank Dobson was Health Secretary, have operated to some degree) and which doesn't contribute to front-line healthcare. The current government's top-down re-organisation was also non-productive diversion of vast sums from the front-line.

The truth about cancer is that, once diagnosed, the NHS performance on survival is as good as most. Where this country lags behind is the detection and diagnosis of cancer, meaning that when it is detected, it is often too late to successfully intervene, thus pushing our survival rates down. The reasons for this can all be linked directly to resources, as there are vastly greater numbers of MRI and CT scanners per capita in most other developed countries than in the UK and it's the same with specialist doctors. When measured against available scanning facilities and specialist doctors per capita, the NHS does remarkably well.

The real scandal of the current government on the NHS, and I struggle with why this has not been more prominently brought into the public domain, is that they got to power on a promise of increasing NHS funding and yet in each and every one of their four years in power NHS hospitals have all received real terms cuts in income of 4% each year. Alongside private sector cherry-picking of the least complex and most 'profitable' NHS work, the fact that the NHS maintains the satisfaction it does on these vastly reducing income levels is remarkable.

Endeth the late night rant, must be nearly time to set off to Charlton. COYR!

 

"This government is evil".

Not sure about that, but I do believe this government is divisive, and looks after its own supporters' narrow interests. And by that, I mean Tory supporters, because it seems to me that the Lib Dems have had only very limited success in mitigating the effect of Tory control despite the supposed constraints of coalition government.

The article is sensationalist, and there are dangers in taking a simplistic view about this. For one thing, it's referring to NEW drugs. As we all know, the pharmaceutical companies protect their copyrights in the early years of a new drug being marketed in order to maximise their profits (they would say in order to fund further research and development). Secondly, NICE already uses 'Quality Adjusted Life Years' to assess the clinical and economic benefits of different treatments, and has done for some time. That is after all, the rationale for NICE's existence. Thirdly, I believe NICE came in to being on Labour's watch, so to use this argument to brand the present government as evil (which may or may not be justified) is over-simplistic.

It seems to me that the NHS is a victim of its own success. The 'free at the point of care' principle with which it was introduced is the gold standard for a civilised society. But treatments have become more and more sophisticated, and therefore, costly. In an ideal world there would be no wait for surgery, treatment or a GP appointment. But its a real world, with economic constraints, so rationing and allocation of treatment along some lines is inevitable.

The scheme mentioned in the article is to be consulted upon. I think the true test of how iniquitous it is will be measured by the political opposition to it - particularly (one hopes) amongst the Tories' coalition partners.

Anyway, if we'd had 'Quality Adjusted Player Years' I think our present squad would have been much thinner!

 

I personally know plenty who do, including women who have used it for childbirth. As another poster mentioned, just try living in a country with limited or no free healthcare. The NHS is one of the most wondeful things that Britain has. It's not perfect by any means, but huge amounts of people would be absolutely screwed without it.

 

I personally know several, including women who have had their babies in NHS hospitals (including Barnsley general). Just try living in a country with little or no free healthcare. Or having a close relative with a chronic health condition (I have experience of both). The NHS may not be perfect. No public healthcare system ever can, but so many people would be utterly screwed without it.

 

Everyone thinks the NHS is a totally efficient service and there's no way a big review of it wouldn't save billions of pounds a year then?

It's just like any other service affiliated to the government wasting billions upon billions every year. The only services that have been streamlined are local councils.

 

What kind of review would w have under the Tories.
The kind where waste and private companies were scrutinised and that evel of their profits were questioned and the need of the community comes first.

Or would it be a review were they could look at maximising private companies profits so one of their can sit on a board and direct profits into a hedgefund to subsidise wealthy pensions by neglecting care to certain parts of society.

I think I know where my guess is

 

So what part of Privatisation = profit element - additional cost over....

...non-profit making organisation where any efficiency savings can be ploughed back do the likes of 'Gloria S' not understand?

Instead of spouting right wing mantra that public services are inefficient and privatisation is 'Nirvana' engage your effin' brains for a minute. Service industries can ONLY generate income one of two ways i.e. Charging the 'customer' or through public funding via taxation. (the NHSalready does this via prescription charges and Government (taxpayers) How will privatisations lead to efficiency savings whilst maintaining the same level of care. Oh! It won't!

The only difference would be that there is an additional cost of shareholder dividends and executive salaries coming out of the existing revenue. Basic economics!

The Power industry was sold off to ensure future infrastructure investment could take place. Look what happened. The Govt are going to have gto put millions into building new power stations cos the private energy companies cannot afford to without massively hiking energy prices. Why? Because the share sales windfalls were NOT invested but many executives (some of whom were ex Ministers who pushed for privatisation) did very nicely thank you!

How thick are some people?

 

Re: So what part of Privatisation = profit element - additional cost over....

looking at the top ranked health services we come in at 18 which does suggest to me that a mixed public and private system like the top-ranked health service in France would deliver some improvements (although we do beat both Switzerland and Germany in the rankings which surprises me because if I were to be taken seriously ill I would rather be in Germany or Switzerland than the UK).


WHO Top Ranked Health Services 2000

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Republic of Ireland
20 Switzerland

 

While that Melton poster wins award for most offensive poster in a short burst, you certain win the award for sustained campaign of posting things I fundamentally disagree with. I am not sure I have ever agreed with a single one of your posts that I've read, both football and non football related.

I can't help but think of Stewart Lee's view of Jeremy Clarkson when reading your posts .

"The thing about Gloria Stitts is he’s either an idiot or a genius right. He’s either an idiot that actually believes all the badly researched, lying, offensive **** that he says. Or he’s a genius who's worked out exactly the most accurate way to annoy me."

 

I didn't mind the one where he suggested we changed our badge to a red star other than that there's a village missing it's idiot isn't there...

 

Excellent post. The last paragraph where you say you struggle with why this has not been brought into the public domain, to me, just demonstrates the high level of control this govt has over the press and media. The journalism etc on the press and tv is even worse than it was during the 1980s, and that's saying something.