Nigel Farage and the abolition of the NHS

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Think you need to carefully read the individual words that are in the simple sixteen word sentence of mine which you quoted - maybe its the double negative that you weren't able to compute ?

And, yes, you are guessing and, yes, you are totally wrong as I work in a hospital which would have cost around £500m to build but by the time the forty years' PFI payments are made it will be around £3bn.

 

When we go abroad we HAVE TO have insurance, make sure them coming here have to have it as well. Some don't and its a well known fact.

 

When it comes to the total of UK citizens receiving free treatment abroad vs foreigners getting free treatment here; the statistics show we are the net winners.
‘Health tourists’ just like ‘benefit tourists’ are a right wing media myth.

I’m not saying that we have always done a good job of policing NHS use, but now we are policing it, it appears to be not done very well. A lot of the wind rush scandal started with people being checked for ‘citizenship’ by the NHS.

 

UK citizens resident in the UK get free medical treatment in the EEA countries, don’t they?
I am not resident in the UK and I have had to use my private insurance to pay for a visit to a doctor in UK for my son, both of us are UK citizens though.
Talk of health tourism fraud really is nonsense. For one, it often costs more to set up a system to check all this than it costs in the treatment given. Secondly, according to a report in Huffington Post, non-UK residents fraudulently abusing the system cost us a total of 712 pounds...

 

To support this, my best mate is an Accountant for a NHS Trust in Lincolnshire, his Trust is always within budget, have just built additional Mental Health facilities and have just applied to build a new £15million pound building for more. They will not use PFI because they are not financially viable. This trust has always managed to balance its books and in fact is so successful the local council ‘invest monies’ (it’s a tax fiddle), compare this to the one that runs Lincoln hospital who use PFI and are always over budget, by the tune of £75 and nearly £100 million over the last 2 years.

 

The tories will get us there if they stay in long enough. Underfund and fail to support the NHS then hold it to account for any failings as if there's no link to their actions.

 

I have Bupa cover, and it costs about £600 a year irrespective of age and other factors. I have to pay the first 20% of claims each year (up to a cumulative maximum of £200), and there are annual allowances for certain types of treatment. ‘Outpatient treatment’ is a bit stingy but refreshes every 12 months. Some services are still provided by the NHS, e.g. GP services and emergency care.

Doesn’t much of Europe have varying types of insurance-based healthcare? What about Obamacare in the US?

I’m not sure how all this fits with some people’s claims that they would be uninsurable, or even dead, under an insurance based scheme.

 

All EU citizens living in th UK are entitled to free healthcare. My parents who live abroad but in a EU country receive free healthcare in that countries public healthcare system.
They won't however when we come out of the EU.

 

Feel for you mate hope things turn out ok .
Unfortunately it’s not only Farages view there’s a few more that shares his platform but unfortunately their stance on Brexit is the overall and most important thing to a lot of voters and would vote for him even if the devil were his campaign manager .
People voting for Brexit related candidates is more important than any NHS saving party or most other policies tbh .

 

It’s easy to see how it fits in it’s called profit :

 

Obamacare has been repealed in the US now. That wasn't a solution anyway, it was just forcing people to purchase a subsidised insurance plan, often with a ridiculously high excess.

The average cost of a heart attack in the US is over $1 million. If you can't afford an insurance plan, you definitely can't afford that.

I also have private healthcare, yet I pay more per month in National Insurance than I pay yearly for my private healthcare. I understand that I'm helping to pay for those that couldn't even think about affording private healthcare, so I don't have a problem with this in the slightest. That's what people like Farage don't care about. He's 100% correct that anyone who earns probably anything over about 25k (which let's be honest, is a massive percentage of the population) would be FAR better off with a 100% insurance based healthcare system. However, anyone under that amount would be bankrupt if they got ill.

 

Agree with most of what you say but on the NI contributions ,the only reason private insurance is relatively lower than other countries is because it’s competing (if that’s the right phrase) with the NHS .
If the NHS barrier were removed and went solely to insurance imo although to start with it would be competitive there’d be a myriad of different healthcare plans which would take an age to navigate and the prices would leave the most vulnerable with the very basic and the majority of us with insufficient care.
The Backdoor privatisation of our NHS is filling the pockets of private healthcare companies and needs stopping imo.

 

People who are treated in american hospitals as critical patients are treated at no cost. They are protected under the Labour Bill. The closest responder (ambulance) must take that critical patient to the nearest hospital, whether it's a private or public one. That patient must then be treated in that hospital (they can't be moved to a cheaper alternative) until they are out of crisis and stable. The state picks up the bill.
If you have a dodgy knee however, or a hernia then you're pretty ****** unless you have healthcare insurance.
So at least the American system of minimal state intervention does recognise that it has an obligation to save the lives of people who do not have insurance.

 

i dont think the two party system will ever be broke up Churton, imo the rise of the brexit party will be restricted to the EU elections, the green party will be more or less the same as too many fear they will end up costing them more and more in taxes, lib dems,well, will always be where they are at so to speak.

the biggest threat on paper is the brexit party but as we know our domestic elections are a different kettle of fish and i think to to-ing and fro-ing between the main two will continue

 

Take pets. You used to be able to get them treated as and when and not bankrupt yourself. Now its all insurance based and costs have rocketed. I'd imagine similar with health insurance.

 

i dont think the NHS will ever be scrapped,it would be political suicide,even for farage, a party gets five years tops in government , privatisation would take far longer than that and any signs of it would render that government defeated come a GE.

 

I'm not going to get into the whole brexit thing Dek (I know you're not bringing it up) and I agree the Brexit Party will disappear once this crisis is over. Given the politics of Farage and Widdicombe I certainly hope so.
I fear you're right about returning to an essentially two party system. I do have hopes that Libs and Greens can make enough permanent inroads to force a more balanced political landscape though. The NHS is a case in point, it's been treated like a political football for many decades. Given how sacrosanct it is for the average Briton it's too easy for the party in opposition to trash the government for whatever they they do with it, get into power, change everything to put their own stamp on it and receive the same treatment.
For as long as I've followed politics I've listened to Labour and Tories come on the radio/tv and say that whatever the opposition say or do is completely wrong. It's patently bo***cks. No party has a monopoly on good ideas or bad ones and it's about time there was some concensus politics in the UK and we just might get some actual common sense policies we can all buy into.

 

We already have an insurance system in place. BUPA etc. I've no problem with it as long as it runs beside and not to the detriment of the NHS. The bottom line is though that insurance companies are not altruistic. They're there to make money out of the people they insure. As much money as possible.
If the balance swings to the point where the NHS offers the absolute basic minimum and insurance is the only real method of proper healthcare then the average man in the street is screwed and Farage and his mates will be laughing all the way to the bank.

 

They get treated, yes, but they have to pick up the bill. if they can't afford it, they're put onto a payment plan. I know people in the US that this has happened to.