Privatising the NHS...

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The NHS is one of the best systems in the world, the problem is that people abuse it and go in for silly reasons. What it needs is some extra spending, smart reform and some clever thinking.

Reply 21

RF_PineMarten

Original post by Crb822

Privatizing the NHS is mostly propaganda and even though it is an issue it isn't as severe as it is made out to be. Everyone knows deep down that most problems concerning the NHS are due to the last Labour government who over spent and bankrupted the country.

Bankrupt is an actual word with an actual definition, it doesn't just mean financial difficulties. Even if you believe the argument that Labour was responsible for the financial crisis and overspending, they did not at any point "bankrupt" the country.

Reply 22

Crb822

Original post by highlyf

I dont think you have any knowledge of how politics at all.

I don't think you have any knowledge of forming sentences that make sense...

Reply 23

Crb822

Original post by RF_PineMarten

Labour's chancellor did leave a note saying "all the money's gone" that sounds like financial difficulties to me. Plus they later said it was a joke. It's nice to see that Labour see the economy as a joke because I sure don't.

Reply 24

RF_PineMarten

Original post by Crb822

That letter was a joke, it wasn't anything official and it certainly can't be used to argue bankruptcy.

Reply 25

bex.anne

Original post by Chuquo2017

Yes definitely.

People are really mistaken about state healthcare. When I had an ear infection I had four unnecessary weeks of pain because they didn't properly diagnose it four times in the NHS.

In America Omaha made Obamacare and it was such a failure that it's cheaper for most people to go direct rather than through Obamacare.

In the U.S. you pay several hundred dollar a year insurance for first class service.

People think that the NHS is free but those same people often pay thousands of pounds in taxes indirectly for it.

I don't need that state for force me to buy from one source. I'm perfectly capable of making my own arrangements.

Posted from TSR Mobile

But surely you had the choice to go private with that ear infection anyway, why should the whole NHS be privatised purely because you (and of course many others) have experienced bad treatment?

Reply 26

Crb822

Original post by RF_PineMarten

That letter was a joke, it wasn't anything official and it certainly can't be used to argue bankruptcy.

Yeah but that's not the point, the state of the economy is not something that should be joked about people lost their jobs what's funny about that?

Reply 27

That'sGreat

Yeah privatise the NHS. Well, some of it. I don't mind paying for a 6 year old to get chemo, but I don't want my money spent on Steve from Hull who needs a gastric band operation cos he's eaten too many pies!

Reply 28

Naveed.178

I think that Brexit will fix it (Hopefully). I think NHS is struggling to get funded because this country pays lots to the EU. Some of that money comes back but some of it gets kept by EU leaders as profit.

Cant believe people in this country wanted us to Remain. We're still in the EU right now, and the NHS is still going to shite. Just saying.

Im a type 1 diabetic. NHS is something that I do experience in my life. Just saying.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 29

TommehBoi

Original post by Jammy Duel

You are the customer, not the government. The current structure is you pay the government via taxation, and then they either directly fund the procedures or act as a middle man to procure the service.

And it saves money, at least on paper, because if there is one thing the public sector is well known for it's waste.

Posted from TSR Mobile

I think everyone is right to healthcare, and that's not possible if completely privatised.

No.

Privatisation does have its place, but its important to do it in areas where patients have a legitimate choice. Giving one catering company the rights to deliver hospital meals is just asking for the quality of those meals to suffer. Put two companies in place so that they have to compete... that might succeed. Sadly, cost pressures mean the first one is the one opted for in circa 100% of cases.

Privatising the delivery of NHS operations, or entire hospitals when realistically an emergency admission has no choice over where they are taken, is a recipe for disaster. Just look at the US.

Original post by Chuquo2017

In the U.S. you pay several hundred dollar a year insurance for first class service.

The average healthcare spend per capita in the US is over $9,000, not 'several hundred'.

UK spend is under $4,000, for comparison, and achieves better outcome measures in almost all cases.

Original post by That'sGreat

... I don't want my money spent on Steve from Hull who needs a gastric band operation cos he's eaten too many pies!

You'll just have to pay for his diabetes treatment, blood pressure treatment, cancer treatment and his ITU stay before he dies of a heart attack instead. Great.

That's one of the great things about national health - you can plan ahead and stop Steve from needing expensive emergency treatment in the first place.

Original post by Naveed-7

A lot of our front-line staff were from the EU and most of our drugs imported from abroad so are now 20% more expensive so... probably not.

Reply 32

nexttime

Original post by Jammy Duel

They tried it not so quietly 6 years ago at Hinchingbrooke and was actually very successful with customer satisfaction up, deficit significantly down (it's now gone by by more than an order of magnitude), and the hospital itself being much improved. You'll also find that there is a tendency for staff to go "nope, we're off" on ideological grounds where they can.

Hang on, you mean the company that took over an NHS hospital, improved the sueprficial aspects for a bit before the cuts took hold, was found to be failing by the CQC and pulled out just 3 years later leaving the NHS to foot a massive cleanup bill? That Hitchingbrooke?

...we discharge very quickly after childbirth, low pharma spending.

Both good things and advantages of the NHS?

The others are issues that could be tackled by, say, increasing our healthcare spending towards the spending of our neighbours.

As for hospitals we don't actually spend less than anybody else, most developed countries spend about 4% of GDP on hospitals.

Completely untrue. We spend significantly less (as in >1.5% of GDP) than countries like France, Germany, Denmark, Canada. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you the kind of funding boost we'd be looking at if the government decided to restore us to equal...

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/health-care-spending-compared

Utilising the normal false dichotomy of "NHS or USA" and completely ignoring the fact that there are other systems out there.

I agree that there are other ways to use the private sector, and that the main reason people compare to the US is because its obviously the worst.

But comparing to Singapore isn't a fair comparison either - if we had a population pyramid like that we'd be set too.

A comparison to the Netherlands or France is fairer.

See two block above, the core elements of the NHS are not underfunded by any stretch of the imagination, they're overspent and overused.

The NHS is suffering from a complete and willing lack of foresight by those in charge and desperately needs more money to implement a medium-term plan to cope with the unprecedented population bubble now entering their 70s.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 33

Gladstone1885

Abolish

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Reply 34

L i b

It obviously isn't happening. The NHS is outsourcing some of its work where it is clearly beneficial to do so.

Original post by Scorpio99

I don't understand why it's being privatized, because I don't see how paying a company to do something is cheaper than doing it directly. If someone explained how this saved money maybe I'd understand.

Here's an example: an NHS hospital is booked up for MRI scans for several months. There is a private hospital down the road that has an MRI machine without a heavy demand on it. The NHS can pay to use that machine and reduce waiting times, particularly at periods where demand has peaked

Original post by ByEeek

I don't understand why public run enterprises are blasted as being so inefficient because in my experience private equivalenta offer a worse service at a higher price whilst skimming a massive profit for themselves. Just look at the trains. Never before did the government spend so much on the railways and they are still rubbish.

Except that on the vast majority of metrics, the railways have improved since privatisation. Even with the deeply imperfect franchising system that they operate on.

Original post by RF_PineMarten

Contrary to propaganda from people of certain political ideologies, the NHS is one of the best and most efficient healthcare services in the developed world, far better than other countries with a lot more private involvement in their health services. We absolutely don't want our entire health service to be run by private companies who only care about profit.

Can we please move away from this ridiculous notion that "private" equates to private companies and private profit? Britain's biggest private healthcare provider is a provident association that reinvests any "profit" in providing care and treatment.

Even in the United States - the inevitable Godwin's-Law-style point of reference used in these sorts of discussions - less than a fifth of hospitals are for-profit businesses.

Reply 35

L i b

Original post by nexttime

I agree that there are other ways to use the private sector, and that the main reason people compare to the US is because its obviously the worst.

There are a lot worse healthcare systems than the US. If I was in the US, doing a comparable job, I'd probably have access to better healthcare than I do in the UK. I suspect this is true of most middle class people. The US has distinct problems, but it's also a world-leader in many areas.

Reply 36

Len Goodman

Yes, get rid of it. Healthcare should be a service, not a "human right". You want it, you pay for it, in my opinion. Also, scrapping the NHS would mean people would take better care of themselves as they wouldn't be able to get treated for free.

For example, young liberal millennials like to drink alcohol and take drugs with reckless abandon, knowing that if anything goes wrong the taxpayer will be able to sort them out. With a privatised health system, they would have to pay out of their own pockets - therefore forcing them to behave more responsibly.

Reply 37

DorianGrayism

Well, yeh. It has already been happening for years. Gut the NHS to make it attractive to Private companies and then sell off the parts.

Reply 38

nulli tertius

Original post by Len Goodman

I think you will find that the healthcare costs of people in their teens and twenties pale into insignificance compared with the healthcare costs of the elderly.

If you think there is any prospect of any government throwing the cost of cancer and dementia treatment onto individual patients, you are living in la la land.

There is more chance of Sinn Fein forming the next UK government.

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Reply 39

Len Goodman

Original post by nulli tertius

That was just an example. It would also encourage the elderly to keep up a healthy lifestyle as it would reduce the risk of them falling ill, and therefore reduce the risk that they would have to pay out for treatment. By privatising the NHS we would increase the overall health of the population, and wouldn't that be a good thing?